MAKING HISTORY

BACK TO SCHOOL: Kaitlyn Dean is first president of Catholic Central School and Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons School

Kaitlyn Dean always had a special relationship with her grandmother, whom she called “Mimmi.”

She was her “everyday grandparent” living with her and her parents in Clifton Park when she was younger. Her grandmother brought her to school, was her confirmation sponsor and was “such an important person in my life,” Dean said.

As Dean was opening a new school last year called the Sola Academy in Evanston, Ill., for students who weren’t successful in the public school setting, her grandmother’s health was failing as was the health of her husband’s grandmother. With both in hospice, Dean drove her then-6-week-old daughter Norah back to the Capital Region, while her husband Nate, a high school social studies teacher, took a plane back with their son, Crosby. They spent two weeks with their grandmothers, but on Christmas Day last year, Dean’s grandmother passed away and Nate’s grandmother passed away in Syracuse two weeks later.

“We had always had this idea that we wanted to move home, but I had just launched a new school. When that happened, that life event (when their grandmothers passed away), we said we can’t delay this any longer,” Dean said. “There’s nothing more important than being home with our families, and especially since losing our grandmothers, we needed to be able to give our kids that because we had no family in Chicago.

“And I really feel, and have felt every moment since, that this was God’s plan to bring me to this role. … I felt like my grandmother has had a hand in that from heaven in bringing me to this place.”

That place is a unique, challenging and historic role as the first president of Catholic Central School in Latham and Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons School in Schenectady. Catholic Central graduated its last high school class this past June and the school is now a pre-K-through-Grade 8 school, while NDBG remains a 6-to-12 school. Dean will guide two schools with decades of history in a position that she seems made for. In her first interview, she met with Dr. Christopher Bott, Superintendent of Schools, and on the same day she had a virtual interview with her old school for a promotion.

“I walked away from that feeling like I really felt a call to it,” she said. In her second interview she met with Father Bob Longobucco and spent the day with Bott, and even though she had not yet received an offer, she called her husband “in tears feeling like this is where I was supposed to be.”

Bott, obviously, felt the same way and he soon offered her the job.

“Kaitlyn Dean has been entrusted with a truly unique and important leadership opportunity as she serves as President of both Catholic Central School and Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons School. Bringing together two proud Catholic school communities requires vision, collaboration, compassion and a deep commitment to our Catholic mission,” Bott said. “Kaitlyn possesses those qualities and understands the importance of honoring the traditions of both communities while helping to build a strong and sustainable future. We are confident that her leadership will help these schools move forward together with a renewed sense of purpose and hope.”

A SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY

At the Catholic schools in the Diocese of Albany, you often hear teachers, students and parents talk about the sense of family that exists at each institution. The teachers really care for the students, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, as if they are their own kids. Having gone to Shenendehowa High School, which graduated over 700 seniors this past year, Dean, who excelled in the classroom, never really found that community there. That’s why, when she graduated, she began looking at Catholic colleges.

“I was lucky enough that I did well at Shen,” she said. “I feel like you kind of get lucky if you are a certain type of student. But I always felt like I was just a number there. Rigorous academics are important, but it is all about sports and things like that. I always felt this mismatch of being surrounded by people who never cared about the same things that I cared about and I found that at Le Moyne. I was going into the college experience feeling that I wanted to be seen.”

At Le Moyne College, the Jesuit-run institution south of Syracuse in Dewitt, N.Y., she received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education, special education and psychology and loved the service element of the school. She was part of service trips to Philadelphia and Dominica, an island in the eastern Caribbean.

“That informed me as a teacher. I could give kids what I felt I didn’t have in public school, which is to be seen and cared for,” she said.

From Le Moyne, she received her master’s degree at Syracuse, and as part of a residency program there, started teaching special education in grades 7-12 in the Syracuse City School District. She moved to Chicago to get her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Loyola University — “those Jesuits drew me in,” she said with a laugh — and was a Director of Student Support leading English language learners and Special Education departments at a K-to-8 school, an assistant principal at a college prep high school, head of school at a private school in Lincoln Park, Ill., and finally started Sola Academy. 

A NEW CHAPTER

Now, as president of Catholic Central and Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons, Dean has offices at both schools and will be overseeing the principals, but most importantly, will be in charge of development and the future vision, which she wants to identify quickly, of the two beloved schools that now function as one but have a joint school board. With an eye toward that vision, Dean wants to continually grow the idea of community.

“My hope going forward is to find a way to make our schools, as one school, successful moving forward and to be able to get back to what generations have come back to, which is not just about Crusaders or Knights, it is about the community that they built here and I want to get to a point where we can expand that and bring that to more families,” Dean said. “I feel like we are at a spot in our community and in our society where people are missing community and they are longing for it and my hope is to get to a point where we can give that back in a way where it’s dwindled in the past.”

And there is no better way to find that community than through Catholic education.

“There is a lot of pride in these schools and that is something that I want to maintain and capitalize on. …  What is really important to me is that the thread is the same at both schools. The thread is community; caring not only for students that come but for their families,” she added. “I really do believe that in Catholic education, we offer something that you can’t find elsewhere, and that circles back to my own experience and looking for that as a graduate of high school, looking to that in my college experience. I have not experienced that feeling of being cared for, my brain and my heart, outside of Catholic education and I don’t think that families can find that elsewhere.”

More Back to School: 

‘A GREAT FIT’: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/a-great-fit/ 

‘DID YOU GO TO CATHOLIC HIGH?’: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/did-you-go-to-catholic-high/ 

NEW YEAR, NEW SCHOOL: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/new-year-new-school/ 

THE SISTERS ARE BACK: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/the-sisters-are-back/ 

AN ANCHOR IN LIFE: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/back-to-school-an-anchor-in-my-life-and-for-many-others/ 

A VALUED PROCESS: http://evangelist.www.clients.ellingtoncms.com/news/2026/sep/23/a-valued-process/