The Academics Team

Andrea Zayas serves as Chief Academic Officer for Boston Public Schools. She began her work in BPS in 2018 and has worked as both an Academic Superintendent and Deputy Chief Academic Officer. Her mission is to ensure every one of the 55,000 students in the district has access to a rigorous, culturally and linguistically sustaining education in preparation for a life full of choice and opportunity. Throughout her 20+ year career in education, she has been dedicated to solving the seemingly intractable challenges school organizations face. Andrea launched Upstream Education Consulting, served as the national director of regional leadership development for the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), and as a turnaround superintendent in Camden, NJ. Previously, Andrea founded and led La Cima, a thriving K-5 public charter school in Brooklyn, NY. Andrea has also served as the director for charter school accountability for the New York City Department of Education, and as a teacher in her birthplace, Bronx, NY. She started her career with LearnNow, where she supported several school start-ups in the Twin Cities, Philadelphia, DC and NYC. Andrea earned her BA at Rutgers University, Ed.M. at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is ABD in her Ed.D. program in Educational Leadership at Xavier University of Louisiana.

Christine Landry joined the Boston Public Schools as a principal in 2012 and has supported schools from the central office since 2015. She started her teaching career as a Teach for America corps member in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and went on to be a teacher, literacy specialist and principal of a K-8 school in Oakland, CA, which under her leadership earned a Title I Distinguished School designation.

Christine holds a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in Educational Leadership from San Jose State University. She also holds National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification in Early Childhood Education and is currently working toward earning her doctorate in educational leadership. She is a mother to three including a BPS teacher. Her aspiration for this year is to collaboratively design and implement intentionally responsive, disciplined, and focused partnerships between the central office and schools in support of their instructional priorities.

Ethan d’Ablemont Burnes has been the principal of the Manning School in Jamaica Plain for eleven years. During his time, the school community deconstructed the substantially separate L/AB cluster and built a full inclusion model for students with emotional impairments. He helped to move the school from being level 3 to being a School of Recognition twice in five years, 2015 and 2018. The Manning was a School on the Move finalist in 2016. The Manning will also be adding a sixth grade in the fall of 2020. Ethan teaches at the Lynch Leadership Academy and also has spoken at the Urban Collaborative Conference. Before the Manning, Ethan was a Boston Principal Fellow at the Ohrenberger School. Before that Ethan worked at the Boston Plan for Excellence working on policy issues including inclusion, weighted student funding, student assignment and central office reform. Ethan started his career in education teaching at the Renaissance School when it first opened in 1995 as one of the first charter schools in the state.

Jill Carter, MA, EdM, is the Assistant Superintendent for the BPS Office of Health and Wellness, leading the district’s Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Approach. The Health & Wellness Office includes: Wellness Policy, Promotions & Evaluation, Social Emotional Learning Instruction, Health Education, Physical Education and Physical Activity.

For more than 20 years, Jill has worked on policy, curriculum development, implementation, training and research of school-based health programs. She has held various leadership roles in BPS for more than 10 years. As the Curriculum Development Coordinator for the School-based Wellness Initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health, she co-authored Planet Health: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum for Teaching Middle School Nutrition and Physical Activity, an evidence-based curriculum. Jill started her career in education as a high school and middle school science teacher. She earned her Master of Education degree in teaching and curriculum from Harvard University and her Master of Arts degree in exercise physiology from the University of Iowa. She is passionate about creating healthy schools, eating healthy and being physically active, and the power of teams to solve difficult problems.

Dr. Regine Philippeaux-Pierre life’s mission is to open doors and remove barriers to black and brown achievement. As a Haitian immigrant who experienced the oppressive forces of racism in education, she is a stark advocate for equity. With over 20 years of experience in education, she is committed to fighting for our most vulnerable students who are often placed in such positions because of unexamined bias in policies and practices.

Dr. Regine Philippeaux-Pierre began her career in higher education and later became a teacher in Boston in 2001 where she taught high school mathematics using culturally relevant pedagogy. She left the classroom and spent eight years in educational research. As a researcher and professional development expert at the National Center for Restructuring Education Schools and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, her research focused on issues in urban education and inquiry-based instruction. From that role, Dr. Philippeaux- Pierre moved on to manage a large project for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to revamp their professional development system. Dr. Philippeaux-Pierre returned to Boston Public Schools to lead the Excellence for All initiative in 2016. Currently, Dr. Philippeaux-Pierre serves as Deputy Chief Academic Officer. Dr. Philippeaux-Pierre earned a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Teachers College, a Masters in Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is a devoted wife and mother to three beautiful children, Mika, 11, Nathan, 9, and Nakiera, 12 months.

Shakera Ford Walker is the Assistant Superintendent in the newly formed Office of Teacher Leadership and Development. In this role, Shakera oversees programs and initiatives related to professional learning, teacher leadership and new teacher induction. Shakera collaborates with BPS educators, district leaders and the BTU Director of Professional Learning to develop and implement BPS’ teacher leadership vision and strategy and bring educator voice to district level decision making, policy and planning. She also facilitates professional learning experiences for teachers and school leaders and designs teacher leadership opportunities in service of student learning and career growth and to achieve system-wide excellence.

Shakera served as a teacher leader in BPS, which was the start of her own leadership journey in education. Prior to this role, Shakera was a Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow with the U.S. Department of Education, where she worked in the Office of Secretary Arne Duncan on teacher and leader effectiveness, standards and assessments and early learning initiatives in the Office of Early Learning. Shakera was an early childhood teacher in the Boston Public Schools for more than a decade, most recently at Young Achievers Science and Math School in Mattapan, MA, where she also served as a Principal Intern.

Shakera was named the NBC “Education Champion” and recipient of the Sontag Prize in Urban Education. In addition, she served as a Boston Teaching Policy Fellow with Teach Plus Boston, and as one of two teachers on the MA Task Force on revising the Educator Evaluation system. Shakera holds a Bachelor's degree in Education/Child Study from Smith College, a Master of Education in Teaching and Learning from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Urban Education from Simmons College and an Administrator license from Northeastern University. She recently completed and earned a certificate of completion for her participation in the Program for Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School.

Dr. Silvia Romero-Johnson has devoted her professional career as a public school educator to district transformation on behalf of all learners with a special focus on English Learners and emerging bilingual students. She began her career in her native country of Argentina. After immigrating to the USA, she served in a variety of capacities, including bilingual resource specialist, bilingual classroom mathematics teacher, and bilingual program support teacher within the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) in Madison, Wisconsin. She has led the district’s transition from transitional bilingual education to dual language immersion education. She was the principal of Nuestro Mundo Community School, the MMSD’s first two-way bilingual immersion charter school. Most recently, she was the Executive Director of the Office of Multilingual and Global Education. In addition, she teaches licensure courses for bilingual and dual language immersion education at several institutions of higher education. Dr. Romero-Johnson and her husband are the proud parents of two young adult children. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking, writing, reading, and maintaining her yoga and mindfulness practice.