Two months after the Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education began its search for a new superintendent, the board has selected a slate of candidates who will be interviewed for the position next week.
During executive session at the April 24 meeting, the board reviewed candidate packets and came out with four candidates: Almudena Abeyta, Faviola Cantú, Christine Griffin and Neal Weaver.
Aldine Independent School District
SFPS superintendent candidate Faviola Cantú.
Cantú is the chief academic officer at the Aldine Independent School District in Harris County, Texas (outside of Houston), and as of the 2023-2024 school year had 82 schools and served 57,737 students. According to the district’s website, she has more than two decades of experience in education and was also an assistant superintendent to the district’s elementary schools. Prior to joining Aldine ISD in June 2019, she served as the director of multilingual programs for the Sheldon Independent School District. She also has experience as an assistant principal and principal.
Humboldt Education Foundation
SFPS superintendent candidate Christine Griffin.
Griffin is the superintendent of the Humboldt Unified School District in Yavapai County, Arizona, which has 10 schools and served 5,432 students in the 2023-2024 school year. According to an article from Prescott LIVING Magazine in 2023, she became superintendent that year after 21 years as an educator in Yavapai County. She has worked as a teacher, special education instructor, instructional coach and as an intervention specialist before she moved up to an administrative role as a school principal, and in 2021 became executive director of educational services and innovation.
Santa Fe Public Schools
SFPS superintendent candidate Neal Weaver.
Weaver is the only candidate now working in administration at SFPS, and has served as the district’s chief information and strategy officer for four years, and prior to that was the district’s executive director of digital learning. In his current role, he is responsible for setting SFPS’ strategic vision and alignment for information technology and its digital learning teams. His experience in managing school technology and helping students and staff navigate digital learning resources goes back to 2004, when he worked as a technology instructional coach at Rio Rancho Public Schools.
On April 28, the fourth of the candidates, Abeyta, withdrew her application. Abeyta is the superintendent of Chelsea Public Schools in Chelsea, Massachusetts, serving 11 schools and approximately 6,094 students. She was born in Albuquerque and had began her career in education as a kindergarten teacher at SFPS before moving to the Boston area to attend graduate school at Harvard University. She has also served as an assistant superintendent in three different school districts, including SFPS again from 2012-2017.
On Feb. 21, the former superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez resigned from his post amid sexual harassment allegations from city councilor (and former Santa Fe High School principal) Amanda Chavez. Since then, his predecessor Veronica García has been the school district’s interim acting superintendent.
On April 29, the board will have a special meeting for interviewing candidates from 4:30 to 8:30 pm, and on April 30, there will be two subsequent “finalist forums” at 4 pm and 6 pm before the new superintendent is selected at a private executive session on May 1 at noon.
The board’s selection of the new superintendent will be revealed to the public at a special meeting on May 6 at 2 pm.
“I would just like to suggest that the public keep an eye out for details on how the forums will work,” Board member Sarah Boses said at the meeting, clarifying that both of the forums on April 30 “may or may not be all of the folks” the board will interview.
“The public is welcome to both forums, but then we will break them up as far as asking questions during which group, and those details will be released tomorrow [April 25],” Boses added
Since then, SFPS has hosted several community and staff forums to allow parents, teachers, students and other onsite staff to give input on the qualities and priorities they want to see in the next superintendent.
At one forum in the Piñon Elementary School gymnasium on March 19, several parents, teachers and former teachers attended to share the priorities they felt a superintendent should have. At the forum, attendees brought up issues including teacher shortages, teacher retention, family engagement, reading proficiency, student absenteeism and social-emotional support for students.
Charles McIntyre, a retired teacher from Miami who now volunteers as a social studies tutor at Santa Fe High School, said he thinks the new superintendent should have “some basic background in professional development” and experience as both a teacher and administrator, and should be present at the district’s schools.
“This is a small school district. There's no excuse as to why the superintendent can’t attend faculty meetings and be at the schools for events,” McIntyre said. “Show up at the schools, talk to the parents, talk to the teachers, the EAs, even talk to the students…to me, the superintendent should not be behind a desk.”
Parent and former SFPS employee Loretta Booker, who also works as a project coordinator for Dual Language Education of New Mexico, said she would like to see a superintendent who advocates “at the state level” for the educational needs of marginalized students.
“Our superintendent should have experience with multicultural and regional education programming, that understands the issues of equity and will support initiatives to protect and uplift our communities of color and our marginalized students and protect their rights, especially with what's going on at the federal level, with budget cuts,” Booker said.
Booker also added that she would like to see a superintendent committed to prioritizing the teacher shortage, noting that her son has not had a permanent teacher in several of his core classes, including English language arts, social studies, math and band.
“Of course, there's substitutes and things like that. I understand his principal is teaching math sometimes for him, so I just feel like we need to do a better job at recruiting and retaining our teachers, as well as growing our own,” Booker said.
Editor's note: This story has been updated on April 29 to reflect that candidate Almudena Abeyta has withdrawn her application for SFPS superintendent.
