Superintendent to retire after school year ends

Bishop McManus has announced that Delma L. Josephson, Ph.D. will retire as Superintendent of Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Worcester at the end of August. Bishop McManus also announced that he will establish a search committee for a new superintendent under the direction of David Surprenant, Esq., former chair of the Catholic Schools Board.
Since 2009, when Mrs. Josephson began with the Diocese, she put in place a diocesan-wide curriculum mapping program, an annual meeting program to support pastors of parochial schools, and she added the position of curriculum specialist to support curriculum and professional development at all schools. She leads the Catholic Schools Office which directly oversees three Central Catholic high schools and one elementary school, as well as supporting 25 parochial and private schools. There are 6,573 students and 738 faculty members in the Catholic schools this school year.
“There are so many wonderful people who daily work or volunteer in numerous capacities in our schools to help them carry on the mission of the Church. It has been my honor to work with and for them,” said Mrs. Josephson. “I have also come to know many of the wonderful priests who serve this diocese. My admiration and respect for them has steadily increased over the years.”
“We have been truly blessed by the contributions Dr. Josephson has made as superintendent,” Bishop McManus said. “She applied her wealth of experience to the position, both in the classroom and in administration, in improving the quality of education for all our students along with a demonstrated commitment to Catholic values. Our search committee will begin with due diligence to fill this critical role in the life of the Diocese.”
A former chair of the U. S. Bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education, Bishop McManus noted that “Catholic education is one of the crucial pastoral ministries of the Church that has strengthened the Catholic community in our country for 150 years.”
A graduate of Marlborough High School, Mrs.  Josephson earned both her bachelor’s degree, in 1976, and her master’s degree, in 1982, from Framingham State College. In 2008 she received a doctorate in school administration from Boston College. Prior to coming to the Diocese of Worcester, she had been assistant superintendent of the Narragansett Regional School District which includes Templeton and Phillipston.
While diocesan superintendent, Mrs. Josephson served as the president of the former Parents Alliance for Catholic Education. She was the only non-public school representative to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Title I Committee. She served on the North Central Suicide Prevention Task Force; the Central Mass STEM Advisory Council; UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center Regional Advisory Council; and on the Massachusetts Catholic Conference Common Core Subcommittee.  Mrs. Josephson is also a member of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, current vice-chair of New England Chief Administrators of Catholic Education, the National Catholic Educational Association and the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.
Mrs. Josephson is a member of Immaculate Conception Parish in Marlborough. She is a lector and eucharistic minister at her parish. She taught religious education in the parish for 10 years.