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As New York City school insiders eagerly await to see how the new chancellor reshuffles top brass, the Education Department has its first high-profile departure.
Cristina Meléndez, the deputy chancellor of family, community, and student empowerment, is leaving her post on Feb. 27, she wrote in an email to parent leaders on Wednesday, thanking them for their work.
“The most important thing you can do is stay engaged in your schools and keep building your child’s confidence day by day, conversation by conversation, and moment by moment,” she wrote. “That steady belief you offer your child becomes their strength.”
She did not say where she planned to head next. Education Department officials did not respond to questions about her replacement or whether the departure is related to a broader cabinet shakeup.
“We look forward to sharing more soon,” Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said in a statement commending Meléndez for her service.
Meléndez assumed her role as deputy chancellor more than a year ago, after serving as the executive director of the Education Department’s Office of Family and Community Empowerment, known as FACE, which among other things, oversees the Community Education Council elections.
The elections have had notoriously low turnout, with roughly 18,000 households, or just 2% of eligible families, casting ballots in 2025. A 2023 Chalkbeat investigation highlighted numerous concerns in how FACE conducted the election process, uncovering how the office was gripped internally by turmoil and factions, potentially affecting the election process. A New York City comptroller report called on the Education Department to implement a series of changes in the voting process, but the participation rate remained unchanged.
“It’s indefensible what happened with the election,” said Robert Murtfeld, a former Community Education Council member in Manhattan’s District 1, who runs an advocacy committee at The Neighborhood School.
Given Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to include families in governance of the nation’s largest school system, Murtfeld suggested there’s an opportunity to find someone who can engage not only the estimated 1.6 million current families in the system but also include millions more alumni.
“It needs to be someone who is inspiring,” he said. “It can’t be a bureaucratic robot.”
Meléndez took over at FACE in January 2022 after serving as a lead on the education transition team for former Mayor Eric Adams.
A former bilingual education teacher in the Bronx and assistant principal, Meléndez earned a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania in educational leadership. While there, she wrote a thesis entitled “Dominican parenting across generations” and examined difficulties the city had engaging Black and Latino parents.
Before that, Meléndez served as a district supervisor for the city’s controversial renewal initiative aimed to turn around failing schools, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.
