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After a yearlong national search for Chicago Public Schools’ next leader, the Board of Education will vote Monday on whether to permanently hire interim CEO Macquline King, a Chicagoan who rose up through the district’s ranks.
The board’s meeting will start at 10:30 a.m. Monday at its downtown headquarters, where it will consider approving a contract with King with a salary of $380,000, according to an agenda posted on the board’s website Thursday.
If approved by the board, the term of King’s contract would begin July 1 and last through June 2029, according to the board’s agenda. The resolution to approve a contract for King says the board has offered King the job, and she has accepted. .
The vote would also cap a rocky search process that’s been a test for how Chicago’s partially elected board could choose a schools chief differently from the past, when mayors would essentially make a pick without much public input. The board’s search process laid out last year acknowledged that it would seek the mayor’s input on its finalist candidates.
Last month, however, a group of six elected board members — including the search committee’s chair, Jessica Biggs — accused the mayor’s office of sabotaging the search, which Mayor Brandon Johnson has denied.
King has been serving as the district’s interim leader of the more than 316,000-student district since last June, when former CEO Pedro Martinez left after being fired without cause.
Martinez had received a five-year contract with a starting salary of $340,000 when hired in 2021 by a board that was fully appointed by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Martinez made about $360,000 when he left CPS.
The other finalist was Sito Narcisse, the former superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish schools in Louisiana, who has been trailed by a mixture of controversy and loyal supporters during his nearly 20 years in education.
Meisha Porter, former leader of New York City schools, was also a finalist, but she withdrew her name after the board announced the candidates’ names on March13.
Johnson interviewed King and Narcisse and called the conversations “fruitful” in a press conference earlier this week. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Norma Rios-Sierra, a mayoral appointee to the school board who sat on the board’s CEO search working group, said the mayor has given “his blessing” to hire King.
Rios-Sierra said the search process has had its “ups and downs,” but she’s excited to have King on permanently.
“I think she has shown her ability to just kind of take on the work that it is to be the Chicago Public Schools superintendent,” Rios-Sierra said. “We needed someone who understood the city, who understood the complexity of what we’re doing.”
King initially taken out of consideration for the job
King’s inclusion on the finalist list was initially a surprise.
She had applied last fall for the job, but the board did not advance her as a finalist at the time. After finalist names were leaked in November and one of those candidates dropped out, the board conducted more interviews and revealed a new list of finalists two weeks ago, which included King.
Two school board members previously told Chalkbeat they received a call from Board President Sean Harden the day before finalist names were announced publicly, saying King would be added to the list, and that Harden had garnered a majority of support from board members to add her.
If appointed, King will face mounting challenges at CPS, including a projected budget deficit to close this summer for the next school year. She’ll also be in place when a new, fully elected board is seated in January, raising questions about how she’ll build relationships with any new board members, who will have the power to keep or replace her.
But King isn’t new to some of these issues. The former principal and City Hall aide led the district through a bruising battle over how to close CPS’ $734 million budget deficit last summer, in which she opposed the mayor’s plan to take out a loan in order to balance the budget and cover a much-debated pension cost. That budget, however, also saw a slew of cuts, including hundreds of custodians and hot meals for kids.
King has also overseen the city’s schools through the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, creating a “command center” for schools to call for extra support, the federal government’s decision to withhold millions of dollars in grant funding, and upheaval in the district’s charter sector.
In September, King had considered a massive reorganization of the district’s network offices, which operate as a sort of middle management between the district’s top leaders and schools. But she appeared to pause the plan after pushback from board members and some principals.
She has earned some public support for her leadership so far, including from the principals union and the West Side branch of NAACP.
Rios-Sierra, who voted no on King’s budget proposal in the fall, said she’s been impressed by how King has been communicative with other government agencies, including City Council and the state legislature. She also noted King’s work in overseeing the transfer of hundreds of students out of ASPIRA charter network’s shuttering high schools and her response to increased immigration enforcement.
“When we asked CPS to move with a sense of urgency when ICE was coming, I think she absolutely listened and did everything she could to communicate with parents and principals,” Rios-Sierra said.
King became a CPS teacher in 1994 at Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary School following a brief stint at a private school. In 2007, King became principal at Alexandre Dumas School, and by 2013 she was principal at Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown, where she was highlighted for her participation in a leadership program for new school leaders.
Her first year as principal at Courtenay was when the school merged with former Stockton Elementary, meaning King was tasked with creating harmony between both school communities. While some acknowledged the difficult task ahead of her, others described part of the school as a “war zone” that was marred with student fights, and they accused school leaders, including King, of not doing enough, according to a DNAinfo story at the time.
King then was hired to work on education policy at City Hall under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and stayed under the Johnson administration until being hired for the role of interim CPS CEO. She had previously applied for the CEO job in 2021, but the board at the time hired Martinez.
King’s personnel records drew some scrutiny before she was hired as the interim CEO. The records did not show any formal discipline but included two memos from district officials about how she should improve her performance. The memos centered on findings that she had not immediately reported allegations of abuse and failed to conduct a background check for a volunteer. The day she was hired as interim CEO, she told Chalkbeat the criticism was fair but that those directives were the result of understaffing at her school.
Board has undergone a rocky search process
The board’s search process to find a replacement for Martinez has been fraught.
Last spring, the board created a working group to lead the process and hired the search firm, Alma Advisory Group. The district held public meetings to collect feedback on what the community wanted to see in a new schools chief.
A survey conducted last summer as part of the search process found that 42% of the more than 2,700 respondents wanted someone with “strong and clear communication.” Thirty-nine percent wanted someone with “innovation, strategic thinking, and problem solving,” and 37% want someone who seeks and responds to feedback from students, parents, and staff.
After conducting a nationwide search, the board received more than 100 applications.
But after finalist names were leaked in November, several board members soured on the process, and by February, Alma parted ways with the district. Biggs and five other elected officials decried the loss of Alma.
Those six elected members that raised questions about the process also called for the board to pause the search process until after school board elections this year and keep King until January 2027, when the new fully elected board will be seated. The West Side branch of the NAACP has also called to keep King in place through the 2026-27 school year, saying they had a “serious concern” about the legitimacy of the board’s search.
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
