Cristine Vaughan

Cris Vaughan is in her seventh year as a New York City Community Superintendent, bringing over 30 years of experience as a teacher, founding principal, and system leader. A trailblazer for NYC Reads and NYC Solves, Cris founded Baychester Academy, a top-performing elementary school. Under her leadership, District 11 has closed gaps between city and state results and achieved double-digit gains for multilingual learners and neurodiverse students. She leads districtwide efforts to strengthen Tier 1 instruction and scale high-quality, knowledge-building instruction through HQIM, coherence, and collective leadership. Cris believes the most powerful, and most overlooked, equity lever in education is Tier 1 instruction. Rather than relying on intervention-heavy models that attempt to remediate inequity after the fact, districts must design core instruction that intentionally builds knowledge, language, and access for all learners from the start.