A regional office of education (ROE), sometimes called a regional superintendent's office, is a level of educational administration in Illinois. Each one has an educational service region, or simply region, consisting of one or more counties, and supervisory jurisdiction over the school districts lying primarily in that county or those counties. The office is primarily under the control of a publicly-elected "regional superintendent of schools", formerly known as the "county superintendent of schools", but also has a publicly-elected "regional board of school trustees", formerly known as a "county board of school trustees".
The regional superintendent is an elected office, different than the appointed superintendents of school districts that operate the public schools. The regional superintendent has many duties related to school issues that cross school district lines.
The early forerunner of the regional superintendent was each county's Commissioner of School Lands in each county, created by state law in 1829, but appointed by the county board and having no responsibility for school operations. The administrative responsibilities began in the 1840s when that the county commissioner became an elected office and was also designated as ex-officio superintendent of schools. By 1865 it became an elected office. Among the duties of the office was to examine and grant teaching certificates to people found competent to teach. In 1865, the elected office of County Superintendent of Schools was established with a tenure of 4 years, a per diem, and a requirement to visit each school in the county at least once per year.
In 1917, Illinois established a non-high school district in each county with territory unserved by a high school, and the county superintendent was made ex-officio board member of that district. In 1953, the county superintendents were required to dissolve any remaining non-high school districts and give the territory to one or more adjacent high school districts. However, Chester Non-High School District 122 survived; the superintendent still remains a non-voting member of the board.
In 1973, the county superintendents' offices of many small counties were consolidated into multi-county regions, resulting in a drop from 102 to 78 county superintendents. The title of the office was changed to "regional superintendent of schools" in 1975.
This was followed by another consolidation in 1977, to 57 regions, each with a population of at least 33,000.
The state mandated a consolidation of regions again in 1995, to 45, each with a population of 43,000.
In 2013, the Illinois legislature required the number of regions to be reduced to 35, and began requiring each region to have a population of at least 61,000 from July 2015 on. Sixteen regions were eliminated by consolidation into other regions between 2013 and 2015.
The office of regional superintendent was eliminated for Cook County from July 1994 to August 1995, but restored.
In 2010, Regional Office of Education 14, which covered Cook County outside of Chicago, was dissolved and replaced with intermediate service centers called North Cook ISC 1, West Cook ISC 2, and South Cook ISC 4.