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Geovanny Ponce speaks to community members after he was appointed Unit 4’s next superintendent last month.

CHAMPAIGN — The 11 members of former Champaign school district Superintendent Shelia Boozer’s leadership team were informed late this week that they’ll need to reapply to be considered for newly structured positions in Geovanny Ponce’s administration.

At least four won’t make the cut. While Ponce encouraged all 11 to apply for the new positions during one-on-one in-person meetings Thursday, he told The News-Gazette late Friday that his will be a cabinet of seven, consisting of a deputy superintendent, chief academic officer, chief of schools, chief of student support and access, chief business administration officer, chief human resources officer and chief of communications and community engagement.

Ponce also expects there to be stiff competition for the newly created roles. If his plan is approved by the school board at its March 23 meeting, Unit 4 will conduct a “national search” to ensure “we get the most talented people,” he said, enlisting the help of the same Texas-based firm it hired to conduct the search that ended with the Fairfax (Va.) County chief of schools’ own hiring on Feb. 10.

Ponce, who officially starts July 1, has made multiple trips to Champaign since being introduced as the district’s next leader and spent untold hours creating a structural redesign of the cabinet — “not as a personnel change but as a student-centered performance strategy.”

“When structure aligns to a strategy, and strategy aligns with student outcomes, results improve,” said Ponce, who believes the smaller leadership team will create “a more focused cabinet with clear responsibilities.”

The paring down of leadership roles at the district’s Windsor Administrative Center will also come with a significant cost savings, Ponce said — “a little bit more than half a million dollars,” all of which he said will be redirected to the schools.

If all goes according to plan, he hopes to have the new positions posted by the first week of April and to have candidates interviewed by June.

Every conversation with a candidate will revolve around the issues Ponce considers the most urgent: celebrating literacy and math, supporting special-education and multilingual learners, reducing chronic absenteeism, recruitment and retention, communicating clearly, restoring community trust, and “ensuring that our leadership structure accelerates student outcomes.”