Deputy San Francisco Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero is the top pick to lead Portland Public Schools.

Doubters told Portland's newly elected school board that finding a superintendent to lead Oregon's largest district before the start of school couldn't be done.

They were wrong.

With 19 days to go until school starts, the Portland school board announced Friday that San Francisco deputy schools chief Guadalupe Guerrero is its choice to become superintendent. He has more than 10 years of experience as a school and district administrator, in Boston and his current district.

With the blessing of sitting board members, three new board members elected in mid-May started looking for a new leader almost right away, before their terms officially began July 1.

After a summer of private in-depth interviews with board members and a community panel, the field of 40 candidates was winnowed, eventually to one.



Board members enthusiastically presented Guerrero to the public as a strong instructional leader.

Unlike the last search, the press was not allowed to attend the interviews conducted with community and staff, and board members resisted releasing a list of the people on those panels.

Portland teachers union president Suzanne Cohen, in a statement, said that process failed to give the union a "meaningful role" in the selection. Cohen said a union representative was on a panel that interviewed four finalists, but said the union's "feedback was not communicated directly to the school board, nor were we given an opportunity to influence the board's decision."

The Friday morning vote to select Guerrero was unanimous.

"As a Latina, and speaking for the Latino community of Portland, I think that this is a historic day," said co-vice chair Julie Esparza Brown. "We have not had a Latino superintendent and I'm thrilled."

Esparza Brown also praised him for being "laser-focused" on closing the achievement gap.

Matt Haney, a member of San Francisco's school board, backed up that praise.

"He's got a very strong focus on equity and social justice. He's led many of our initiatives to close our racial opportunity gap and target resources to meet the needs of our students," Haney said. "He's had a lot of success in supporting targeted strategies to raise the achievement in many of our schools."

Graduation rates, Haney noted, are the highest they've ever been.

"He does his homework," Haney said, calling him a "hard-working, committed, data-driven leader."

"He's kind of like a whiz kid. He's got all of the information at his fingertips and just works really hard to put it into practice," he said. "The guy like never sleeps. This is his life's work"

Guerrero's departure is a loss for San Francisco, but not a surprise, he said.

Guerrero, 47, has been ready to lead a large urban district for some time, Haney said. He and fellow board members knew he'd end up somewhere.

So why not San Francisco? That district picked a new superintendent in April. Guerrero wasn't tapped to lead his current district as either the interim or permanent superintendent.

Haney said the search was confidential and he couldn't comment on whether Guerrero had applied.

As happened with Portland's failed search in May, the nod from Portland Public Schools again went to a school administrator from an urban district who has never been a superintendent.

Guerrero is San Francisco Unified School District's deputy superintendent of instruction, innovation and social justice, a role he's held since 2012.

The San Francisco district's website says that means he's tasked with "developing reform strategies to close student achievement gaps and enabling central offices to better support school-site-level improvement efforts."

Guerrero, who said was not a candidate in the prior search, said he applied because he saw the Portland district as a "grand opportunity as well as quite a challenge" because the district is at such a "critical juncture."

The San Francisco district serves roughly 53,000 students. Portland serves about 49,000.

The board plans for Guerrero to start work in Portland in October.

Guerrero has been with the San Francisco district since 2010. He was an assistant superintendent there until his promotion in 2012. Before that, he worked in Boston Public Schools where he faced challenges as a principal, according to The Boston Globe.

He told The Globe the setbacks he faced as the unsuccessful principal of a troubled school led him to pursue a doctoral degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.

He didn't finish the degree. The professional obligations that came when he was hired in San Francisco kept him too busy to complete his dissertation, he told The Globe. As a consequence, Harvard terminated him from the program.

That detail caused trouble when he tried to return to Boston to lead its school district.

The Boston school system erroneously put on its website he was on hiatus from the program, a mistake the school board chairman blamed on himself, not Guerrero, The Globe reported.

Ultimately, Boston chose someone else. Guerrero remained in San Francisco.

During that search, the superintendent who promoted Guerrero into his current role praised him as ready to lead the east coast district, which serves roughly 56,000 students.

"He's my right-hand man," Richard Carranza told The Globe. "I've seen him in very difficult emotional community meetings. I've seen him interact with parents traumatized over losing a child. I've seen him in every conceivable situation. He's been unflappable. He operates from the core of who he is, the son of single mother — those are life experiences you can't fake."

San Francisco teachers' union President Lita Blanc would not be interviewed for this story. Blanc wrote back to The Oregonian/OregonLive's email asking about Guerrero, "I am not in a position to comment on this."

Guerrero's wife, Carolyn Leofanti, is a second grade teacher. They have two children: a son starting college this fall and a daughter who will be a sophomore year in high school.

Although the Portland board's release of a single name may send shivers up the spines of nervous parents who felt burned by the last search's implosion earlier this year, much is changed.

For starters: The public learned Guerrero was the top choice when board members met to take a public vote Friday morning.

Last time, board members didn't vote publicly, but sent out a press release that they had settled on Atlanta Public Schools administrator Donyall Dickey. From there, the board spent money on a vetting trip they let the candidate steer. Contract negotiations and a background check dragged on for months, only to have the hire blow up.

Board members said Dickey lied about his past while Dickey claimed the district was cheap.

This go-round, the search has involved a deeper background check, though a final one is still pending. Salary negotiations happened with a narrowed pool of serious contenders to avoid a situation where a lone hopeful held too much leverage, board chair Julia Brim-Edwards said.

Brim-Edwards said the board approved a salary of $295,000. That's comparable to the pay of Beaverton schools chief Don Grotting, a seasoned superintendent who was awarded a starting salary of $291,000 when the Beaverton school board hired him last year.

The board interviewed seven semi-finalists — including some from Oregon — culled from a pool of about 40 potential superintendents it considered.

School board member Rita Moore said during the public meeting that she was skeptical the newly-elected school board could turn around a search this summer. A finalist before the start of school seemed like a pipe dream, she said.



"I was just blown away by the pool of candidates that we got and it was difficult to narrow the field as we went," Moore said. "I think all of us can't wait to start working with this guy."

The choice also means yet another powerful Portland public servant will likely be imported from the Bay Area. This week, Ted Wheeler chose Danielle Outlaw, a 19-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department, to lead the Portland Police Bureau.

Guerrero would replace Carole Smith, who left a year ago under the cloud of a lead in drinking water scandal that unearthed a trove of problems beyond dirty water. Numerous high-ranking employees have since left, and the school board will expect Guerrero to hire people who can help him remake whole departments and earn back lost trust.

And if there are any doubts Guerrero is serious: He's already filed paperwork with Oregon's Teach er Standards and Practices Commission so he can obtain the proper license.

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com