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Bogdana Chkoumbova, the Chicago Public Schools chief education officer and outgoing CEO Pedro Martinez’s second-in-command, is leaving the district at the end of the school year.
Chkoumbova’s departure could herald more high-profile defections from the district as Martinez prepares to leave CPS in June. In late December 2024, the school board fired him without cause, which gave him another six months on the job under his contract.
A 24-year veteran of CPS, Chkoumbova announced her decision to step down in a Thursday afternoon message to families. She did not spell out what is next in her career, except to say she will “seek out new opportunities to drive positive change in public education.” She touted her longevity in the district, which she first joined in 2001 as a special education teacher.
“An immigrant from Bulgaria, I was new to both the country and the classroom, and my sole focus was to help students with disabilities get the most out of their education,” wrote Chkoumbova, who went on to lead Chopin Elementary and Disney II Magnet School before taking on roles in district administration.
Martinez promoted her to chief education officer in January 2022. Chkoumbova said she is proud of her work on the district’s five-year strategic plan, a new school budgeting model that emphasizes school needs rather than enrollment, and a more holistic approach to evaluating school quality. She highlighted gains in the district’s graduation rate, pre-kindergarten expansion, and participation in middle school algebra.
In an interview with Chalkbeat, she also said the district’s leadership team had rolled out “one of the most thoughtful and effective academic recovery programs in the nation.”
“While we are not where we want to be, we have demonstrated that a lot of the strategies that we have put in place are absolutely effective and they’re moving our students in the right direction,” she said.
Chkoumbova told Chalkbeat that Martinez’s dismissal signaled to her “a desire for a new direction” more broadly with district leadership, and she did not want to stand in the way. She said she is not interested in serving as interim CPS CEO — a role that the school board will almost certainly have to fill as it looks for a permanent replacement for Martinez.
In recent months, some school board members have voiced concern that Martinez’s firing could trigger more departures from his leadership team, potentially creating instability and a more challenging transition to the next CPS administration. He was ousted after clashing with Mayor Brandon Johnson over the district’s budget and amid contentious contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s former employer and key ally.
Martinez was chosen to take on the role of Massachusetts education commissioner this summer. The new, partly elected Chicago school board recently kicked off the search for his replacement.
In a note to members, Kia Banks, the chief of staff at the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, the union representing school leaders, praised Chkoumbova’s work, calling her “the driving force behind the open, honest, and productive dialogue we’ve built with CPS leadership in recent years.”
Chkoumbova’s departure comes at a time of unprecedented scrutiny of CPS’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by the Trump administration, which has launched multiple investigations into the district. She said the district is taking the inquiries and the threat of pulling some of the district’s federal funding seriously — while it remains focused on addressing academic disparities facing its students, including its Black students.
“We are assessing all of these risks to make sure that we protect the funding and the resources that are coming to our district,” Chkoumbova said. “At the same time, we don’t deviate from our values.”
This story has been updated to include comments from a Chalkbeat interview with Chkoumbova.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
