UMES People
The Key / April 12, 2019
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1894 alumna’s grandson to speak at spring commencement Dr. John B. King Jr., the youngest grandchild of one of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s earliest graduates, will deliver the 2019 spring commencement address to graduates Friday, May 24. King was scheduled to speak at UMES’ 2018 Founders’ Day Convocation and summer commencement, but the threat of Hurricane Florence prompted Maryland’s governor to declare a state of emergency as a precaution. University leaders subsequently postponed the Sept. 13 ceremony, which created a schedule conflict for King. King is president and chief executive of The Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps for students from preschool through college. He previously served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. The ceremony will be held in the William P. Hytche Athletic Center starting at 10 a.m. His paternal grandmother Estelle Stansberry graduated in 1894 from Princess Anne Academy when it was a secondary school affiliated with Baltimore’s Morgan College. The college’s 1893-94 catalogue identified her as the winner of Princess Anne Academy’s “declamation” prize, an oratorical competition for which she received $5. Stansberry went on to become a nurse at a Philadelphia hospital that one of her sons eventually led as an administrator. King’s father, John Sr., was the first black principal in Brooklyn, N.Y. who eventually became New York City’s executive deputy superintendent of schools. Adalinda, his mother, was a guidance counselor. Both of his parents died by the time he was 12.
He credits his parents’ peers — particularly educators at Public School 276 in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood and at Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island — for saving his life by providing “rich and engaging educational experiences” that gave him hope for the future. King earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Harvard University, a law degree from Yale Law School, a Master of Arts in teaching (social studies) and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University. He taught high school in Puerto Rico and then in Boston, where 20 years ago he helped found a charter school in one of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. He replicated that model five years later in New York, where as an administrator he helped launch a network of charter schools by drawing on his experiences at Boston’s Roxbury Prep. From 2011 until 2014, King was state Commissioner of Education in New York, the first person of African American and Puerto Rican descent to hold that post. Before succeeding Arne S. Duncan as the Obama administration’s education secretary in March 2016, he was the federal agency’s senior deputy administrator responsible for policies and programs affecting pre-school through grade 12 education, English learners, special education and innovation. King is a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Education and a member of several boards, including The Century Foundation, The Robin Hood Foundation and Teach Plus.