CHAMPAIGN – The audience at Monday’s Champaign Unit 4 Board of Education meeting welcomed back former assistant superintendent Angela Ward with cheers.
Ward and most members of the previous superintendent’s cabinet have all retired or been demoted, with the option to return to teaching. The new superintendent, Geovanny Ponce, appointed three from that group into leadership roles this week.
Ward will become interim principal of Central High School.
“I have a dream that every student will have a path and a plan,” she said. “And I know that Dr. Ponce and the team here has that same dream.”
Ponce recommended Ward as principal after conducting interviews for the Central High School principal vacancy, new Chief Human Resources Officer Alejandro Gomez said. Ward has been an English teacher, a dean of students, a principal, an assistant superintendent and she has a doctorate in education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he said.
“We are excited about the knowledge, the experience and the heart that Dr. Ward brings to this role,” Gomez said.
A parent had brought up Ward’s accomplishments at the board meeting in June and asked why she wasn’t rehired into Ponce’s cabinet.
In addition, audience members cheered the appointment of former Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Mike Lehr to director of secondary teaching and learning, as well as the appointment of former Assistant Superintendent of Leadership Henry Walker to principal supervisor for elementary and K-8 schools.
Monday was the first meeting after Ponce and his new cabinet’s official start dates of July 1.
School board president Tony Bruno welcomed the new team.
“We have very high hopes for each of you and all of us as a collective to do the right thing for the kids in our district,” he said. “And I trust that each of you has the same motivation.”
He also thanked the one rehire to Ponce’s cabinet, Dan Casillas, for serving as interim superintendent for more than a year.
Board member Justin Michael Hendrix has been skeptical of the new cabinet hires. He asked the new leaders on Monday to do their research on Champaign’s history of racial segregation and efforts to address that.
Voters elected a school board in 2025 that promised to end the contract of the previous superintendent, Shelia Boozer, due to transparency and communication issues. Other community members disagreed, saying the superintendent was doing well and was unfairly targeted as a Black woman. The new school board approved that separation agreement in May last year.