State superintendent field faces 1st cut

The state Board of Education will decide Friday which three names to recommend as Nevada's next superintendent of education.

The board has scheduled two days of interviews to give ample time for the five finalists to each make their case why they are the best choice to replace Keith Rheault, who is retiring. Each candidate is scheduled to have two hours before the board.

Once he has the three names, Gov. Brian Sandoval will make the final decision. In the past, the board was responsible for hiring, evaluating and, if needed, firing the superintendent. That was changed at Sandoval's request by the 2011 Legislature.

The first three - Rene Cantu Jr., Magdalena Martinez and Caroline McIntosh - will be interviewed beginning at 8 a.m. Wednesday. The remaining two - Sylvia McMullen and James Guthrie - will be interviewed beginning at 8 a.m. Thursday.

The interviews will be held in the Grant Sawyer Building in Las Vegas and videoconferenced to Room 3137 in the Carson Legislative building. The public is invited to attend at either location or watch the process on the legislative website, www.leg.state.nv.us/MeetingDisplay/AudioVideo/.

Friday's hearing will also be held in Las Vegas at the Department of Education conference room. It will be videoconferenced to the Carson Department of Education board room on Fifth Street.

The five finalists are neither prioritized nor ranked in any way. In alphabetical order, they include the following:

• Rene Cantu Jr. is executive director of the Latin Chamber of Commerce Community Foundation. Cantu was vice president of multicultural affairs at Nevada State College and held other positions there from 2004 through 2009. Cantu holds a Ph.D. in educational administration and a master's of fine arts from the University of Texas, Austin.

• James Guthrie is a senior fellow and director of Education Policy Studies at the George W. Bush Institute. Before that he was a professor of Education Policy and Leadership at Southern Methodist University and previously held professorships at Vanderbilt and the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford.

• Magdalena Martinez is assistant vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs with the Nevada System of Higher Education. She has held a variety of positions within NSHE going back to 1998. Martinez has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Michigan.

• Caroline McIntosh is superintendent of schools in Lyon County, a post she has held since 2008. Beginning as a teacher in the White Pine School District in Ely, she worked her way up to assistant superintendent before moving to Lyon. She holds a master's degree in Elementary Education from the University of Nevada, Reno.

• Sylvia McMullen holds both a master's of Education Administration from Texas A&M and a law degree from the University of Houston. She is president of Vital Communications, a consulting firm for educational institutions on data, system management and training.