Sonja Santelises (née Brookins) was raised in Peabody, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.[1] Her father Jackson Andrew Brookins was a chemist from Mississippi who was also an industrial relations executive for Eastman Kodak, and her mother Verna was a former social worker who was in charge of community relations at Polaroid as well as a district minister for the Pentecostal church.[2][1] Both of her parents grew up in the Jim Crow south.[1] She has a younger sister, Shahara, who became a college professor.[2]
She is married to Lew Santelises, who is an American hedge fund and private equity fund manager who founded Santelises Fund Management. They have three daughters, including two fraternal twins.[2][1] She has given a TEDx talk.[4]
From 2010 to 2013, Santelises was the chief academic officer in Baltimore, then served as vice president for The Education Trust, where she worked on K-12 policy and practice.[1]
In Baltimore City
Santelises became the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools in July 2016, replacing Gregory Thornton, who was ousted by the school board.[5][2][6] She has advocated for improving the curriculum as a way to help close the achievement gap, and has conducted audits to find out where students are receiving gaps in their education.[7][8] She has advocated for literacy programs and stopping teacher layoffs.[9][10]
Criticism
In 2017, Santelises had to defend and explain how she would fix the district's $130 million budget deficit, which she inherited from the previous administration.[11] She received national criticism in January 2018 when several Baltimore schools had to close for days due to heating systems going down, causing near freezing temperatures in classrooms, which she said was the result of systemic and long term underfunding of the school district.[12][13][14][15][16]
