St. Paul superintendent candidates Joe Gothard and Cheryl Logan both appear to have what it takes to be the public face of Minnesota's second-largest school system.
Gothard, a local candidate from the south suburbs, is a member of the legislative committee of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts (AMSD), which is back at the State Capitol this year pushing for per-pupil funding increases.
Logan, a senior leader with the School District of Philadelphia, has pressed its agenda and reported on its work in appearances before the City Council — twice in the past week, she said.
But St. Paul has plenty of issues to tend to at home, and the candidates were asked how they might approach them during a pair of interviews this week. The second, on Thursday, was the longest and broadest — 21 questions with follow-ups — and conducted by school board members.
A sample of responses by topic follows:
Achievement gap
In the past two years, the gap between white and black students testing as proficient in math remained at 44 percentage points in St. Paul — 66 percent of white students being proficient compared with 22 percent of black students — and grew in reading to 47 percentage points in 2016.
Gothard, superintendent of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District, said his district has sought to steer students into AVID, a college-readiness program tailored to the "academic middle" — those students who are capable of challenging work but falling short of their potential. Nicollet Middle School in Burnsville is one of 140 schools in the country to be selected as a national model for the program, he said.
Logan promotes giving students access to advanced coursework as early as possible and ensuring that those opportunities continue to be available as they get older. The temptation, she said, is to say of high achievers, "Oh, they're fine," and to overlook them as they head into their middle school years. An educator's job is to "unpack the opportunities," she said.
