Sonja Santelises takes global education role after Baltimore schools tenure

Sonja Santelises has left Baltimore City Public Schools after a 10-year run and is taking a new global education role, ending one of the longest CEO tenures in the district’s history. Her departure closes a period that brought national recognition to City Schools even as Baltimore families kept pressing for stronger attendance, graduation rates and test scores.

Santelises retired June 30 after leading the district since May 2016. Baltimore City Public Schools said she completed a full decade as CEO when she stepped down, and district leaders had been preparing for the handoff for more than a year. The Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners began CEO search work by Jan. 7, 2025, and by the Dec. 10 public board meeting commissioners had already given their first update on the search.

The district announced on April 20, 2026, that Dr. Jermaine Dawson would become the next CEO starting July 1. Dawson had been serving as deputy superintendent of academic services at the School District of Philadelphia, and the board said he was its unanimous selection.

Santelises also left with a set of honors that underscored her standing inside and outside Maryland. Baltimore City Public Schools named her the 2026 Maryland Superintendent of the Year in late October 2025, then said in mid-December that she was one of four finalists for the 2026 National Superintendent of the Year. The district said she had also been named superintendent-in-residence at The Broad Center at Yale School of Management, and in July 2025 she was chosen to chair the Council of the Great City Schools’ Urban Schools Coalition.

Her Baltimore record was shaped by those accolades and by persistent scrutiny over how much academic progress City Schools actually made. Student performance, chronic absenteeism, graduation rates and test scores remained part of the public conversation as her tenure wound down, leaving a basic question for the next CEO: whether Baltimore City Public Schools is better positioned now than it was in 2016, when Santelises took over.

That answer will fall to Dawson, who enters the job with the search complete and the transition already underway. For city families and taxpayers, the measure of Santelises’ legacy will be whether the district can turn a decade of leadership, awards and reforms into steadier gains in attendance, diplomas and classroom performance.