The San Francisco School Board has selected a city native and a former leader of Oakland schools to be the district's next superintendent.
The board announced in a news release that it has named Vincent Matthews as the finalist for the superintendent's job and is scheduled to vote next Tuesday on a contract to hire him.
"We wanted to make sure that we picked the best leader for the district, focused on student equity, social justice, and improving the climate for our educators and school personnel," says Board President Shamann Walton. "We chose someone with a wealth of instructional experience, leadership experience and personal knowledge of SFUSD.”
Matthews has been serving as the state-appointed superintendent of the Inglewood (Calif.) Unified School District. Before that, he led the San Jose (Calif.) Unified School District as superintendent for 5 1/2 years. He also had a stint as the state-appointed superintendent for the Oakland Unified District and as an area superintendent for the San Diego Unified District.
Before becoming an administrator, Matthews worked as a teacher and principal in San Francisco. A native of San Francisco, Matthews attended district schools and graduated from JE McAteer High School. He received his Bachelor of Arts, teaching credential and eventually his doctorate in education from San Francisco State University.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in the early 2000s, Matthews also served as the principal of the Edison Charter Academy in San Francisco, a controversial public, for-profit school, and a vice president for the charter-operator Edison Schools. He is an alumnus of the Broad Center, a training ground for superintendents that was founded by Eli Broad.
“Having been a student in the district, I believe I owe so much to the staff members, educators and caring adults who delivered a high-quality rigorous education to me," says Matthews. "I look forward to working with the our current staff to provide each and every student the quality instruction and equitable support required to thrive in the 21st century.”
The San Francisco superintendent's job became vacant last year after Richard Carranza announced he had taken the top job with the Houston Independent School District.
