Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network. | Dario Cantatore/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival Moskowitz says she will not serve as Trump education secretary

Eva Moskowitz will not serve as education secretary under President-elect Donald Trump's administration, the charter school leader announced on Thursday.

"At this time, I will not be entertaining any prospective opportunities," Moskowitz told reporters at an unrelated news conference outside City Hall.


Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy, the city's largest charter network, said she had voted for Hillary Clinton, but hopes to work with Trump on the issue of school choice, saying there were "many positive signs" that the president-elect would govern differently than he campaigned.

"I will work with him and whoever he selects as education secretary," she said, adding that she is "troubled by what I see as a sort of rooting for Trump's failure."

Moskowitz had been under consideration for the Cabinet position, according to Trump officials, and she met with Trump at his office in Trump Tower on Wednesday, POLITICO New York reported.

She previously declined to comment on the possibility of serving under Trump.

Moskowitz's meeting with Trump came as something of a surprise to New York City's education community, given her long history as a Democrat and the overwhelmingly minority population of her 41 charter schools.

The morning after Trump's surprise victory last week, Moskowitz wrote a letter to her staff, telling them she was personally "upset" by the outcome. She also predicted: “Many of our families today will feel very deeply and very directly that they are the target of the hatred that drove Trump’s campaign.”

Other education reform leaders, including former D.C. schools Chief Michelle Rhee and Center for Education Reform director Jeanne Allen, are reportedly still in the running for the post.

Moskowitz’s brief flirtation with a Trump appointment could provide enduring fodder for her critics.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew has already begun that line of attack: on Wednesday, he criticized Moskowitz for entertaining the possibility.

The speculation could also put Moskowitz in an awkward spot with Success Academy parents. Of the 14,000 children in her 41 charters, 93 percent are black or Latino. Many are Muslim, and some are undocumented immigrants — all groups that came out disproportionately against Trump last Tuesday. Moskowitz repeatedly declined on Thursday to answer questions about whether she was concerned that any undocumented students in her schools might be deported under Trump's administration.

Moskowitz has grown her national stature in recent years, criss-crossing the country to promote Success Academy specifically, and education reform in general, in the halls of Congress and at the annual closed-door meeting of the country's most influential financiers and CEOs at the Sun Valley Conference.

But even charter school allies expressed concern about what a possible Moskowitz appointment would mean for the national education reform movement. New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait, a strong supporter of charters, warned on Wednesday that Moskowitz's appointment could spell "disaster for the cause of education reform" by tying the movement to Trump's administration.

Moskowitz maintains close ties to hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson, who has been a major donor to both Trump and Success Academy.

Thursday’s news conference was the second time in a year that Moskowitz took to the steps of City Hall to end speculation about her future ambitions.

Last fall, she convened a news conference to announce that she would not challenge Mayor Bill de Blasio's reelection in 2017, though associates of Moskowitz maintain that she still hopes to one day become mayor.

Moskowitz will now remain at the helm of the Success network, which she plans to grow to 100 schools over the next decade. That aggressive expansion plan has been complicated over the last year, as she's battled negative stories about the internal workings of her network and about controversial discipline practices in Success schools.

In her remarks on Thursday, Moskowitz singled out The New York Times — which has reportedly critically on Success Academy — for their coverage of Trump's transition.

"When the Times takes near-daily pot-shots at President-elect Trump's transition team, they are using up ink that should be spent on the challenges our country faces," she said.

Moskowitz, who was at City Hall to press for more school space for charter students, said she plans to continue her ongoing battle with the mayor.

"If I left and went to D.C., who would keep their eyes on Mayor de Blasio?" she said on Thursday.