Monica Schroeder grew up attending a private school in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago and then parochial and public schools in north-suburban Skokie.
She was a first-generation American with bilingual parents who immigrated to this country as teens; her father, Raul Tejada, came from La Paz, Bolivia, at age 18, while her mother, Rosa Maria Cubria, was 13 when she arrived from Havana, Cuba.
“I was raised in a Spanish-speaking household,” Schroeder says, “until I started kindergarten, and that’s when I had that sink-or-swim experience in school. The teachers asked my parents to please speak more English at home, and so, typical to many others who experience similar situations – kids are like sponges – I picked up English so well that I lost a lot of my Spanish. That obviously was counter to what we teach in schools now.”
Her chance to recover that tongue came nearly a dozen years later.
Raul Tejada, a certified public account and chief financial officer, took a job as president of a company in Mexico City, where Monica spent her senior year of high school at the American School Foundation.
“That was the first time I ever experienced a true bilingual, dual-language program,” she says of the international school founded in 1888. “It was different and amazing, and for me to experience that was phenomenal. I was very fortunate.”
Coming home to Chicago the next fall, Schroeder followed her father’s undergraduate trail to DePaul University to study business.
By her sophomore year, however, she realized that something was missing.
“I really started to think, ‘What is my passion?’ – and I realized that the greatest joy I had was when I was teaching,” she says. “I had been a lifeguard and taught swim lessons, and even when I was in Mexico, there was an elementary school across the street from where I went to school, and we volunteered. I remembered having such a positive experience where I really found joy in serving others and teaching others.”
Schroeder changed her major to elementary education, a decision she’s never regretted. It shaped who she became – and it continues to define who she is now.
A classroom teacher at several grade levels. An associate principal. A central office administrator. A former president of the Illinois Association of School Personnel Administrators. The current president of the American Association of School Personnel Administrators.
And, coming July 1, 2026, the first Latina superintendent of North Shore School District 112.
Going with her into that role are a stack of credentials from the NIU College of Education: She holds her Ed.D. in Educational Administration (2012), her Ed.S. Educational Administration (2007), her M.S.Ed. in Educational Administration (2005) and, most recently, her Chief School Business Official endorsement (2021).
Despite Schroeder’s “phenomenal undergrad experience” at DePaul and its academic emphasis on urban education, she decided to pursue her advanced degrees at NIU for affordability. This was before school districts offered more generous reimbursements, she says.
Later, after hanging her M.S.Ed. on the office wall, she came to appreciate the Saturday course schedule during an era before remote learning.
“I needed to find a program that worked for me,” says Schroeder, who has served as deputy superintendent in North Shore 112 since 2018. “I could not take doctoral classes at night. I was already a principal, and I needed to focus on my work during the week. I needed to find something that would be weekends.”
The four-time Huskie now lists another incentive for choosing NIU, which she also calls “phenomenal.”
“It’s the people. It’s the people who bring it together. I loved the cohorts, and I had professors who I felt really cared about me and are really engaging,” Schroeder says. “I liked that a lot of the courses, while they were taught by full-time professors, also brought in practitioners. There was a balance between, ‘This is what the research says. This is what I experience in higher ed,’ and, ‘Here are the people who are in the field doing your work.’ I always recommend Northern.”
SCHROEDER’S 2006 ARRIVAL in Highland Park was serendipitous.
Her “seven-year itch” to join the administrative ranks, which had become possible thanks to her newly earned master’s degree, meant she would need to bid a bittersweet farewell to her six-year launching pad of Palatine-based Community Consolidated School District 15.
“Quite frankly, I was very selective in the places where I was applying. I remember someone had said that North Shore School District had an opening as a middle school associate principal, and I almost did not apply for the position because I didn’t know if the school was going to be diverse enough for me,” she says.
“Going to school at DePaul, I really was interested in urban education,” she adds, “and then I ended up in the suburbs in Palatine in a diverse school in a diverse school district.”
But after interviewing with District 112’s Elm Place Middle School staff, parents and even students, she says, “I realized that this was the place for me. I absolutely loved it. I loved the interactions with kids. I was left in a room by myself, where they interviewed me – and, as you can imagine, they asked me any question they wanted.”
Walking out after that session, “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I want to be part of this school district that gives kids that much agency and voice.’ I’m very fortunate to have landed my first administrative role here in District 112 and to continue in that path here.”
Climbing the professional ladder since then has been “a journey” with a team of educators and administrators in collaborative pursuit of “a continuous cycle of improvement” and “celebrating not just the big wins but the small wins as well.”
For Schroeder herself, the personal mission is the same.
“What really motivates me is thinking about how the biggest change that we can make in elementary education really starts at the classroom level: Teachers who really motivate, inspire and engage students is the key,” she says.
“Obviously, you need to have resources. You need to have great curriculum. But it’s teachers who make the magic happen. That’s why I originally went into HR. I wanted to help attract and select those people, and then to focus on the retention, which is critical, especially in this time of a shortage.”
The more she made a positive impact at the district level, the more she wanted to make even greater differences.
“I didn’t go into this saying I wanted to be a superintendent,” she says, “but what I quickly started realizing as I looked at all the statistics in Illinois is that 70% of superintendents in the state of Illinois are white males, and then I thought, ‘Why are more males superintendents?’ Then, I started to think that if I want to change the system, then I have to become a superintendent.”
NIU paved that path – and Schroeder’s parents provided the perpetual prod.
“Coming from an immigrant family, they never wanted me to just stop at obtaining a master’s. It was always that push of, ‘You could do more. You can do anything you want,’ ” she says of earning her Ed.S. and Ed.D. “During the pandemic, I enrolled in the Chief Business School Official endorsement program because I thought that if I ever want to dip my toe into becoming a superintendent, I wanted to be able to show people that I can be fiscally responsible and keep our house in order.”
WHEN THE DISTRICT 112 school board named Schroeder to the district’s top job, the members included plenty of time for preparation and transition.
Michael Lubelfeld, superintendent since 2018, announced that he will retire in 2026.
“I have a very unusual timeline. Most people don’t get appointed superintendent with a two-year runway,” Schroeder says. “Being that I’ve been here for over 19 years, we’ve accomplished so much, but we have yet so much more to accomplish.”
That includes $250 million of construction work to renovate school buildings; two middle schools already have been transformed, she says, and Indian Trail, the first of five elementary schools tabbed for updates, just reopened Dec. 2. The next project (Sherwood) begins in January, and Ravinia will open in the fall of 2025.
Schroeder is also proud of the district’s collaborative relationship with its employees and their unions.
As deputy superintendent, she served as chief negotiator during last spring’s four collective bargaining sessions with teachers, which resulted in a five-year contract. Classified staff, meanwhile, are in the second year of a five-year agreement “also settled in record time.”
Proof of their on-the-job contentment is found in annual HUMANeX surveys, she says: This year’s numbers show that a record-high 86% of respondents call themselves “highly engaged and highly satisfied in terms of culture.”
Review and revisions of the district’s mission, vision, values and goals are underway and set to generate a recommendation to the school board by February.
Discussions during the process gathered input not only from district leaders and employees but also from students, parents, local residents and even District 112 graduates now in high school.
“Who best to tell us what school is like?” Schroeder asks. “Our kids live it, and they’re helping us create our goals and to really think about the future. I believe we’re on the right path, but getting their insights is making us aware of where the areas of growth and the opportunities are. It’s exciting to hear from students.”
For those students, and those coming generations, that foundation yields academic results. The most recent Illinois Report Card ranked three of District 112’s school as “excellent” and the rest as “commendable.”
No wonder Schoeder wants to stay.
“We’re making gains not just in achievement but growth as well. That’s really important to me,” Schroeder says.
“I had conversations with the board and said, ‘Look, I want to be the next superintendent here. I don’t want to just be a superintendent. I want to be the next superintendent here.’ I was very clear on this: ‘This is not something I’m seeking anywhere else. I want to lead this school district,’ ” she adds.
“I believe in our work. I believe in our staff. We have the resources. We have a community that really supports our social-emotional learning and the wellness of our students, and I think that’s critical, especially in this day and age when so many students are anxious. We’ve seen all the statistics about ‘The Anxious Generation.’ There’s a lot that’s coming at our students.”
WHAT IS COMING AT Schroeder is renewed and reinforced confidence.
Her eventual promotion will make her not only the first female superintendent in District 112 but the first Latina.
“I’m very humbled. I’ve been on a long journey here, and I really am honored,” she says. “This is an incredible opportunity, and being appointed just shows the board’s faith in me and support – and the feeling is mutual. I could have left and gone somewhere else, but I didn’t want to go anywhere else. This is my home. It’s such a prestigious school district.”
Meanwhile, she adds, “I love the high expectations. I work hard.”
Schroeder is, of course, not the only person to take note of her accomplishment from an ethnic lens.
A doctoral student from the University of Wisconsin-Madison already contacted her after the school board’s vote in early June. She’s writing her dissertation on women of color in the superintendency and, in particular, Latinas, who represent fewer than 2% of the people in those positions.
“I was also contacted by a colleague who said, ‘Monica, I believe you’re No. 12 in Illinois.’ There are only 12 of us Latina superintendents in the state,” Schroeder says, “so when I hear those statistics, and when I have these personal interactions, I’m a little bit overwhelmed to think, ‘Wow, there are so few of us’ – which also fuels me to continue our work.”
That means inviting, bringing and welcoming a greater representation of backgrounds and voices to the table, she says, so that students can see, and that parents, families and other stakeholders can understand, the importance of diversity in leadership.
“I’m very pleased with the route our school board took because I believe there are more people just like me out there, and I don’t believe that they always have the same chances with the other school boards out there,” she says. “I feel it was a huge step for our school board to say, ‘We don’t want to risk losing Monica. We want to keep her here.’ To me, that was very affirming.”
Encouragement also came from mom and dad, both of whom always supplied that in ample amounts.
Raul, who tried retirement but eventually returned to work as a CFO at a private equity firm, is ready to hang up his hat for good in a couple months. Rosa, who worked in the corporate health care sector, retired a couple years ago.
Rosa attended the school board meeting to see her daughter named superintendent-designate of a school district that serves a rich diversity of families and prioritizes dual-language programs.
“Mom is over-the-moon excited. The board also approved our collective bargaining agreement with the teachers’ union that night, and my mom came home crying. She said, ‘The union said such nice things about you. I don’t think that’s always said by every union.’ That was very cute,” Schroeder says.
And dad?
“My dad has very high expectations. When I got my CSBO, he said, ‘Why don’t you go and get your MBA?’ I said, ‘Dad, I think I’ve obtained every single degree I can in education, but I appreciate that you think I could always do more,’ ” she says. “Now, both Mom and Dad are extremely proud.”
