Meet the Principal: Art Raimo

Art Raimo was practically an institution at his former school.

He served as teacher and eventually president of Maryland's Our Lady of Good Counsel High School for 33 years. He spearheaded the school's transfer to a new $51-million campus. The school has a scholarship named after him.

At 59, Raimo was primed to coast for the rest of his career at the school he rebuilt, and where his three children attended.

But he left.

"I've done just about as much as I can do here,” Raimo told himself.

“I pretty much knew what the drill was there. I felt I was getting a little too complacent,” the principal said.

It took a pretty good proposition to lure Raimo away from the school located in Olney, Md., north of Washington D.C.

For him, the Academy of the Holy Names seemed a perfect fit: Tampa's oldest school, and one of its best funded and most prestigious.

Yet, “something that's maybe a little bit smaller,” Raimo said. The Academy has 795 students to Good Counsel's 1,200.

But the Academy, located at 3319 Bayshore Blvd., is not without its challenges, another important stipulation for the lifelong Catholic educator.

Lagging enrollment is one of them, and at the top of Raimo's fix-it list.

“Pre-k through third grade are where the losses have been,” he said, adding that the Academy's head count has dropped by about 50 in those grades over the past five to eight years.

“There's greater competition from quality private schools, public schools with very strong programs, charter schools with very strong programs. While the Academy has a tremendous heritage here in Tampa, that's not enough. Parent's have more choices these days, and that's a good thing for them,” he said.

Also high on Raimo's agenda is working on the Academy's new strategic plan with its governing board of trustees. He said it should be approved soon.

“I think that plan will be the road map for us. We're gonna take a look at the program and see where there might be some improvements,” he said. 

Raimo wouldn't give specifics, but said changes will include improvements to the school's athletic complex, which is across MacDill Avenue from the main campus.

A native New Yorker, Raimo graduated from Nazareth High School in Brooklyn in 1969, and Brooklyn's St. Francis College in 1973 with a bachelor's degree in history. That year, he started his career at Good Counsel, where he taught history and social studies, and coached junior varsity baseball.

From 1991 to 1994 he served as elementary principal for Blessed Sacrement School in Washington D.C. He returned to Good Counsel in 1994 as an assistant principal, and made president in 1997.

Raimo believes a Catholic education is as relevant to today's children as it was to him.

“I do think that it's important that a person's life be grounded in something that's bigger than himself or herself. For me, that's always been my faith, and faith is a source of action. If do you believe, then you're going to act with compassion, your going to act with empathy, your going to be more selfless than selfish,” he said.

Raimo lives in Ballast Point with his wife Maureen, who coincidentally attended the Academy of the Holy Names in Silver Spring, Md., as a high schooler. They have three grown children who live in the Washington D.C. area.

How is he adjusting to Tampa so far?

“I like it very much,” he said. “I thought was going to be jogging on Bayshore every day, but the combination of the heat, and all the great restaurants I've found so far in South Tampa, have so far worked against me.”