Stacey Shells
Board of Directors
Stacey Shells is the founder and CEO of ReGeneration Schools, a non-profit school management organization that revitalizes schools and communities through its college prep and character mission. ReGeneration currently serves 1,600 students in grades K-8 across three campuses on the South Side of Chicago and is setting up a start-up school to expand its mission in Cincinnati. Born and raised in Cincinnati, Stacey is the product of a mother who was a career principal, acting as a school administrator for 30 of her 35 years in education, and an engineer father who taught at MIT before moving to Proctor and Gamble and eventually starting his own electrical contracting company. Stacey's parents believed deeply in the power of education and education reform, which has shaped her path to this day. She always looks back to her mother, who was the first principal to use the Open Court Reading curriculum in Cincinnati, to drive her passion for strong education reform.
Stacey's work in classroom instruction, school and network leadership, and education reform has been featured over the years in many works by her peers. The authors of Great Habits, Great Readers showcase Stacey's outstanding work in literacy; and Paul Bambrick-Santoyo highlights Stacey's effective data practices in Driven by Data, her expertise as a managing principal in Get Better Faster, and her transformational student culture in Leverage Leadership.
Seven years and two schools later, Stacey moved on to tackle her next challenge: school turnaround. Stacey set her sights on Chicago to work on turning around inner-city schools on the South Side. With that, ReGeneration Schools was formed. Under Stacey's leadership, ReGeneration's three campuses moved from the bottom 17% of Illinois schools in 2012 to the top 39% of all schools statewide in 2015. In addition, all three campuses ranked in the top ten of all Illinois schools with similar demographics. Currently, Avalon is ranked #1 in the state for similar demographics, with Basil ranked #5 and Washington Park ranked #12.