Government appoints Katherine Ringeling as director of SLEP Hanga Roa

The President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric Font, appointed Katherine Ringeling León to the position of executive director of the Local Public Education Service of Hanga Roa, which comprises the commune of Easter Island, for a period of six years starting March 1, 2026. The decision was formalized in decree No. 52 of the Ministry of Education, dated February 24, 2026, and published in the Official Gazette no. 44,595 on Tuesday, November 10, 2026. The administrative act bears the official reference CVE 2896867 and is also signed by the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo Astorga.

The legal framework of the appointment

The appointment is based on article 21 of law No. 21,040, which created the Public Education System and ordered the creation of seventy Local Public Education Services as part of the demunicipalization policy. This regulation establishes that the direction and administration of each service is the responsibility of an executive director, the head of the agency, appointed by the President of the Republic through the selection process for senior public executives. The SLEPs are defined as functionally and territorially decentralized public bodies, with their own legal personality and assets, which relate to the Executive through the Ministry of Education.

The territory under the responsibility of the new director is delimited by decree No. 162 of 2022 of the Ministry of Education. Its article 64 names the service of the Valparaíso Region referred to therein as the Local Public Education Service of Hanga Roa; article 65 sets the territorial scope of competence as the commune of Easter Island, with its domicile in that same commune, and article 66 stipulated that the agency began its functions on March 1, 2025.

A competition with documented milestones

The selection process file, identified as competition No. 26,078, records the following stages:

• July 24, 2024: the Ministry of Education, through official letter Ord. No. 222, requested the Civil Service to initiate the public competitions, including that of Hanga Roa.
• October 2024: supreme decree No. 1,311, from the Ministry of Finance, set the public senior management allowance percentage for the position at 25%.
• July 24 and 25, 2025: the Public Senior Management Council approved the selection profile through agreement No. 9,785, adopted in ordinary session No. 1,986.
• December 15, 2025: official letter Res. No. PIN-ORST-00056-2025 sent the list of proposed candidates to the president of the Local Steering Committee.
• February 13, 2026: the Public Senior Management Council certified that, once the applicants were notified, no claims were filed; that same month, official letter Gab. Pres. No. 264 formalized the presidential selection and official letter Ord. No. PIN-OO-00062-2026 sent the file with the background information to the minister.

Remuneration and conditions of assumption

The decree sets the remuneration of the appointee at grade 4 of the Single Salary Scale, in accordance with DFL No. 40 of 2018, of Education, which established the service’s staff. Likewise, it determines the public senior management allowance at 25%, according to supreme decree No. 1,311 of 2024, from the Ministry of Finance, and orders the expenditure to be charged to item 09, chapter 58, program 01, subtitle 21, personnel expenses, of the budget of the Local Public Education Service of Hanga Roa.

The text also incorporates an exception clause: for urgent reasons of good service, the authority arranged for Katherine Ringeling León to assume her duties on the indicated date without waiting for the full processing of the decree, which was reviewed and published after its issuance. The appointment records her national identity card No. 13,023,473-9.

Impact on the insular territory

The resolution entrusts the leadership of the public education service of Easter Island to a titular head with a six-year mandate, which provides stability to the management of state-dependent establishments in an insular territory with particular logistical conditions. This completes the installation of the service, which began operations in March 2025 and until now operated without an executive director appointed for the full legal period. The appointment also occurs within the context of the progressive implementation of the seventy SLEPs contemplated in Law No. 21,040, whose transfer of establishments from municipalities progresses according to a schedule.

Source: Official Gazette of the Republic of Chile, no. 44,595, Tuesday, November 10, 2026, Section I, General Norms, p. 1 (official reference: CVE 2896867).