The brand new batch of finalists for superintendent of Boston Public Schools is already looking better than last year, according to former Education Secretary Paul Reville.
“I think it is a slightly better pool,” Reville said during an interview with Boston Public Radio Wednesday. “In my view, it's still not an A-level pool, but it's a strong pool and there are at least a couple of very promising candidates in there.”
The finalists are Marie Izquierdo, chief academic officer at Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Brenda Cassellius, the former commissioner of the education for the state of Minnesota, and Oscar Santos, head of school at Cathedral High School in the South End.
“There are some people with high levels of experience and credibility and promise,” Reville said. “I'd love to have seen a large city sitting superintendent or former superintendent in the group, and there's nobody who's had that top-level CEO experience in a city of comparable or larger size.”
The search for a superintendent began last October, and narrowed down the 39 applications to three possible options.
Brenda Cassellius “served quite well” as the chief state school officer in Minnesota, according to Reville.
“From everything I can gather, she has a good reputation nationally of running a state education agency, which is of course a different thing than running a city school system,” he said.
Marie Izquierdo is the chief academic officer in Miami-Dade County, which is the fourth-largest school system in the country.
“This is a substantial school system,” Reville said. “And as chief academic officer, she plays an important leadership role at the center of the school system, and the school system has performed well during her tenure so I think that's quite promising.”
Oscar Santos, well-known in Massachusetts, served as superintendent in Randolph during “a very controversial, turbulent time” before moving to Cathedral High School in Boston, according to Reville.
“He was a young superintendent going in there, he'd had only high school experience beforehand, [and] there was a lot of external pressure and budgetary pressure on that district for which he wasn't responsible,” Reville said. “On the other hand, if memory serves me correctly, there were some challenges for a young superintendent the first time in that role.”
For Santos especially, the school committee ought to do their “due diligence,” Reville said.
“Were I on the school committee, I'd want to look into in some depth in terms of his candidacy,” Reville said. “The other two have top-level reputations and show promise.”
“I think the school committee has done a good job of putting a credible threesome of candidates in front of the community to choose,” Reville said, “and we'll see what happens.”
Paul Reville is a WGBH contributor, the former Secretary of Education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education where he also runs the Education Redesign Lab.
