Reimagining Portland Public Schools: A Conversation with Superintendent Guerrero

Guadalupe Guerrero became the new Superintendent of Portland Public Schools in October of 2017—more than a month after the school year had begun. Thrown in amid a process to redraw school boundaries and efforts to remove lead pipes from aging buildings, Guerrero is facing major challenges in his first year leading the states largest school district.

Now that he's been on the job for a few months, we'll ask him what he's learned, how he plans to tackle longstanding issues, and his vision for what Portland Public Schools can become. Join us for this important conversation.
 
Guadalupe Guerrero started October 2 as the Superintendent of Portland Public Schools, the largest and most diverse school district in Oregon. He came to Portland from the San Francisco Unified School District, where he served as Deputy Superintendent of Instruction, Innovation, and Social Justice for the past five years. 

After growing up in the Bay Area, Guerrero attended UCLA, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1992. He started his career in education as a teacher, working three years in San Francisco, then moving to Boston Public Schools, where he taught for four years. As he taught, Guerrero added two certifications from Harvard, as a principal in 2002 and in the Urban Superintendents Program in 2009. He worked as a principal in Boston from 2002 to 2008 before returning to San Francisco as an assistant superintendent in 2010, a post he held for two years before becoming deputy superintendent in 2012.

Guerrero and his wife, Carolyn—a longtime public school teacher—have a college-age son and a daughter who is a high school sophomore.

JT Flowers, born and raised in the heart of Northeast Portland, is a field representative in the Office of Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), a Truman and Rhodes Scholar, and a a graduate of Portland Public Schools. He is the founder and former president of A Leg Even, an organization geared towards facilitating the academic and professional success of low-income college freshmen. JT has studied the intersectional impacts of class, culture, and institutions on effective policymaking and integrative social change, with a focus on increasing access to opportunity and socio-economic mobility amongst under-resourced communities.