UFCW Local 1529
Standing strong for working families
Powering · Labor Education
Dr. Roderick F. Richmond
Superintendent · Memphis-Shelby County Schools
A Memphis educator of more than 32 years who came up through the classroom, led academics through the historic city-county school merger, and now runs the 23rd largest school district in the United States. He is also a personal friend from the Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands, and he has carried the TSU motto, Think, Work, Serve!, ever since.
The Aristocrat of Bands
“I met Dr. Roderick Richmond and Sedrick Turner in the fall of 1991, in the Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands. We were young men in the same band family, learning the same lesson at the same time: you earn your place by showing up, doing the work, and carrying your section.
Tennessee State's motto is Think, Work, Serve! — and these two have carried it ever since. One of them runs a school district for Memphis children. The other builds businesses and gives it right back to those same children. Think. Work. Serve. They are my personal friends, and they are friends of this movement.”
— Kevin Bradshaw, President, Memphis CLC · Founder of Labor Education
His brother from the same band line: Sedrick Turner — Builder & Giver
Sedrick Turner (left) and Dr. Roderick Richmond (right) in Memphis — Turner in his Checkers shirt, Richmond in a suit, both of them still working the same city.
Thirty-plus years after the Aristocrat of Bands, they are still in the same work: one of them runs the school district, the other feeds and funds the schools inside it. Think, Work, Serve.
Dr. Richmond leads a district that educates roughly one in every three children in Shelby County and employs thousands of Memphians — teachers, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, nutrition staff, mechanics and office professionals. Public schools are a labor issue in this city, and the superintendent's office is where those two worlds meet.
Since taking over he has rebuilt the regional superintendent model so each part of the county gets support tailored to its schools, cut teacher vacancies roughly in half, put a long-term academic plan and a facilities roadmap on paper, and turned about eleven surplus properties back into money for the district.
“I am pleased to express my support for the Labor Education App and Laboreducation.org as a valuable educational resource for students, educators, and communities across Shelby County. The Labor Education App addresses a critical gap in workforce readiness education.”
The Board named the exact things this platform was built to do: curriculum-ready content on worker rights, labor history and collective bargaining; pre-apprenticeship awareness for electrical, HVAC, plumbing, carpentry and construction; and Memphis labor history — including the 1968 Sanitation Workers' Strike — taught to Memphis children in their own city.
And we are not stopping at a letter. We are getting ready to start our District 10 Trades Pathways class — free, 18 and up, the on-ramp from a Memphis classroom into a union apprenticeship and a trade that pays.
Tap either page to open the full letter.
Dr. Richmond reading aloud to Memphis-Shelby County Schools students for Read for the Record. The Academics and the Attitude in his Five A's are not slogans on a slide — this is what they look like on a Tuesday morning.
- 32+ YearsA career built inside Memphis classroomsDr. Richmond has spent more than three decades in public education — teacher, school leader, and district administrator — in the same community he now serves as superintendent.
- 2013–2014Chief Academic Officer through the historic mergerHe served as Chief Academic Officer during the merger of Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools — one of the largest school district consolidations in American history.
- Before the top jobTransformation Officer, then Deputy SuperintendentHe led the district's school-transformation work and then served as Deputy Superintendent — the operational seat behind nearly every school in the system.
- January 2025Named interim superintendentThe board turned to the person who already knew every building, every region, and every number.
- February 11, 2026Appointed permanent superintendent — unanimouslyThe Memphis-Shelby County Schools board voted unanimously to name Dr. Richmond the district's permanent superintendent.
- March 31, 2026Permanent contract approved through February 2029The board approved his permanent contract, which runs through February 10, 2029, with written accountability tied to student achievement and district finances.
- Leadership Memphis Change Makers Award
- Inductee, University of Mississippi School of Education Hall of Fame
- Leadership programs at Harvard University
- Tennessee School Boards Association leadership programs
A Friend of the Movement
Every fight the labor movement wages in Memphis runs through these schools. Our members' children sit in those classrooms, our union siblings teach and drive and cook and clean in those buildings, and the graduates walking out in May are the people our apprenticeships and trades programs are built for. Dr. Richmond is a champion for those children — and a friend of this movement.
Sources: Memphis-Shelby County Schools Office of the Superintendent, Chalkbeat Tennessee, FOX13 Memphis, WREG News 3 and WKNO. Personal recollection of the 1991 Aristocrat of Bands is Kevin Bradshaw's own.
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