Baltimore schools board to appoint new CEO amid record-low scores

Baltimore City Public Schools will put a new chief executive in place Monday while families are still living with record-low test scores, the state’s highest chronic absenteeism and a student population that keeps shrinking. The Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. at district headquarters, 200 E. North Ave. in Baltimore, to consider approving the appointment and employment contract for the district’s next CEO.

The new leader is set to begin July 1, 2026, after Sonja Brookins Santelises leaves office in June. Appointed in 2017, Santelises has become the longest-serving CEO in Baltimore City Public Schools in nearly 79 years. Board Chair Robert Salley and the new CEO are scheduled to make brief comments after the vote, followed by a 10:30 a.m. news conference with civic leaders.

The handoff comes with a blunt scoreboard. Baltimore City’s average SAT score fell to 856 in 2025, a record low and nearly 60 points below 2017, and the district’s four-year graduation rate has improved only modestly over the past decade. Statewide, Maryland’s 2025 four-year graduation rate was 86.4 percent, down from 87.6 percent in 2024, with the largest decline among multilingual learners. In Baltimore City, chronic absenteeism remains the clearest warning sign: Maryland defines chronic absence as missing 10 percent or more of school days, and state presentations show the city had the highest chronic absenteeism rate among Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions last school year, with nearly half of public school students chronically absent.

That is the first-year test the new CEO will face. Parents and students should be watching whether the district can pull more children into classrooms every day, stop the SAT slide and produce real movement on graduation outcomes, not just a new set of talking points from the top floor. Baltimore City Public Schools says there are already pockets of progress. James McHenry Elementary/Middle School cut chronic absenteeism from 64 percent in 2020-21 to 40 percent in 2024-25, and nearly half of the district’s schools earned 3, 4 or 5 stars on the 2025 Maryland Report Card, the highest share since that system began in 2018.

The board has spent months preparing for the decision. It hired Alma Advisory Group in May 2025 and retained Kremer Communications in March 2025 to handle community engagement, then held forums, surveys and listening sessions before presenting an updated community engagement report on March 3, 2026. The district says 2025-26 enrollment stands at 76,362, down 479 students from the prior year. For the next CEO, the challenge is not just to steady the system, but to prove that Baltimore schools can finally move beyond a decade of stagnation.