With the mayor at her side, and a bit of emotion in her voice, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña officially announced on Thursday that she will step down as leader of the New York City public school system early next year. She started on the job in 2014, making her one of the longest-serving chancellors in the city. 

"There is nothing more satisfying than being able to be a public servant, and really mean it — that you're a servant of the people," she said. 

She said that she never came to the job to be loved or popular. She wanted to be respected, and earn people's trust.

"The thing I'm proudest of," said Fariña, "is the fact that we have brought back dignity to teaching, joy to learning and trust to the system."

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that when he coaxed Fariña out of retirement four years ago, he underestimated that she would "take on the role with the kind of energy you can only call superhuman."

He said Fariña will go down in city history as one of its most effective school chancellors, due in large part to her vast experience as an educator. 

"I heard this from teachers all over the school system, I heard this from parents: people felt they were in good hands," de Blasio said. "People felt that there was an educator at the helm that really knew her stuff and really felt their lives, and it made all the difference."

Though the Department of Education, under Fariña's watch, continued many of the programs initiated under the Bloomberg administration, many of her own priorities served as an antidote to her predecessors: she restructured the school system, putting more authority back in the hands of superintendents; she scrapped the A-F letter grades assigned to schools; she significantly slowed school closures and the expansion of charter schools. 

But even defenders of the charter sector, some of her greatest critics, acknowledged her dedication and wished her well. 

“Chancellor Fariña, or Carmen as she prefers to be known, didn’t always see eye to eye with the charter sector," said James Merriman, head of the New York City Charter School Center. "But because of her leadership, over time we forged a good working relationship that resulted in unprecedented collaboration and cooperation between the sector and the district."

A national search for a new chancellor was well underway. The mayor said he was looking for another educator, like Fariña, to help continue the vision laid out in his "Equity and Excellence" agenda. 

For her part, Fariña — who is now retiring for a second time from the New York City schools — said she would keep her hand in pet projects and planned to stay involved in education in some capacity, though she did not hint at how.

"The next stage of my life, I am not going to have a blackberry to walk around with," she said. "I am going to go out to dinner and not respond to any emergencies."

Fariña will continue to serve as chancellor for another few months, the mayor said.