President Elect
Term expires 10/26

Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez is superintendent of Hartford Public Schools, one of the largest urban school districts in Connecticut. Born in Puerto Rico, she migrated to Hartford at age nine and has served as an education leader in the Greater Hartford region for more than 25 years. Before becoming superintendent, Dr. Torres-Rodriguez was the district’s Acting Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Leadership where she provided culturally courageous leadership to support the comprehensive improvement efforts of a network of 11 schools. As superintendent, she spearheaded the district’s restructuring, alleviating some of the systemic inequities in Hartford’s education system by providing equal access to resources, tools and learning opportunities for each school. The district implemented an equity-centered budget formula resulting in additional resources to schools with multilingual learners. Between 2017 and 2021, the four-year graduation rate for multilingual learners increased by more than 10 percentage points.

Dr. Torres-Rodriguez has earned multiple awards, including the 2022 ALAS Latino Superintendent of the Year Award, the 2019 Connecticut Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (CALAS) Award for Educational Leadership, the 2019 National Brillante Award for Educational Excellence from Prospanica. She was featured in a “Women of Distinction” article by Hartford Magazine in 2019.