Their pitches have been made. Now a decision awaits.

The Clark County School Board of Trustees interviewed the six people hoping to be the district’s next superintendent on Friday. The finalist pool includes three external candidates and three people with current or past ties to the district.

During roughly hour-long interviews with each candidate, trustees quizzed them on topics ranging from closing achievement gaps and improving district culture to handling a $2.4 billion budget and working with the board.

The trustees will meet Wednesday to discuss the candidates and likely choose a successor for Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky, who’s retiring in June. Here’s a look at what the candidates discussed during their public interviews:

Jesse Welsh

Jesse Welsh grew up as a child who received free or reduced-price lunch, never believing he would have a shot at college. Influential teachers in his life changed that, he said, altering the trajectory of his life, which ultimately brought him to Las Vegas.

He now serves as the school district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and professional development but wants to parlay his experience into the district’s top role.

“Every opportunity that I’ve had in the district I have been excited about for the fact that I can impact more students’ lives,” he said. “That’s what gets me excited every morning waking up.”

Welsh said he has played an active role in bolstering the district’s Advanced Placement program, implementing the state-mandated reorganization, expanding magnet schools and improving career and technical education.

But he didn’t gloss over the district’s challenges. Among them: Closing the achievement gap for minority students and finding a way to reduce the number of those students who wind up suspended, expelled or in alternative schools.

Welsh said he sees too many students with “brown or dark skin” who are attending alternative schools. He recalled meeting one teenager recently who talked about always falling back into the same negative circle of friends.

"It broke my  heart,” Welsh said. “I looked at that kid and I thought, if we could have gotten to that kid earlier — before he got into this cycle — maybe that could have been different for that kid.”

As for the district’s finances, Welsh said he would work closely with Chief Financial Officer Jason Goudie, whom he described as having a “sharp head on his shoulders.”

Welsh also presented trustees with what he called his “Four Foundational Cornerstones,” which include plans such as developing a district scorecard and creating a district-wide “choice application” for parents who want greater ability to select their child’s school.

Welsh described himself as someone who’s big on “planning and backward-mapping.”

Donald Haddad

Don Haddad has served as superintendent of the St. Vrain Schools in Longmont, Colorado, for a decade, but he applied for the Clark County superintendent gig to reach even more students.

The longtime superintendent painted himself as a leader who aims to inspire those around him while closely monitoring finances. He started his career as a teacher before moving on to administrative-level roles.

He touted his experience shepherding a district’s budget, although his current one is roughly $500 million. The Clark County School District’s is $2.4 billion.

Even so, Haddad said his district received two awards for its fiscal management, and he led the district through successful ballot initiatives that bolstered school funding.

“Finances are an absolutely critical part of what happens in a district,” he said. “I know that we are primarily focused on our people, but the reality is if you don’t have strong finance, you can’t do right by your students. You can’t do right by your teachers, your staff or your community”

Haddad said expanding pre-school to every building and lengthening the school day or year could help close achievement gaps. But he offered another method as well: Showing students what their futures could look like after high school.

“Once you inspire and motivate them and give them a pathway to success, they’ll take off on their own,” he said.

Public schools educate roughly 90 percent of children in the United States, he said, making them the most important aspect of the nation’s future success. Haddad emphasized his devotion to public education, noting that his wife is a middle school teacher and his daughter attended public schools.

He also believes the Clark County School District could become a model for large, urban districts across the country if improvement efforts prove successful.

“I think we have to work really hard to make sure our community understands how important our work is and the good things that we’re doing on behalf of our children,” he said.

Mike Barton

Mike Barton may be the school district’s chief academic officer, but he tried to make one thing clear during his interview: He’s not afraid of change.

“As a local superintendent finalist, I will be the antithesis of the status quo, realizing that things will need to change if we’re going to produce better results,” he said. “I have experience serving in some of our toughest and most challenging schools in the district, bringing innovative ideas to the table.”

Barton delivered trustees an eight-page entry plan that largely revolves around rebuilding trust in the district, improving morale and adding more financial transparency and accountability.

His “theory of action” relies on making educators and other employees feel valued because they, in turn, will help students succeed.

“Our people change trajectories,” he said, referring to students’ lives.

Barton has spent 20 years working in the district. His wife works as a teacher in the district and, as he put it, isn’t shy about telling him what needs to change.

As more charter schools move into the region, Barton said the district must amplify its marketing efforts and let parents know why their children should enroll in a public school. For instance, principals should feel free to tout their schools’ unique programs on social media, he said.

“We can’t afford to lose students, and we need to do everything in our power to keep them in the Clark County School District and be very aggressive about it,” he said.

The district should harness real-time data visualization to keep tabs on student progress or lack thereof, he said. Barton also wants to form an office of social-emotional learning that would work with outside agencies to address the needs of the whole child. He would repurpose existing funds to create the office.

He’s not against asking for more state money, though. Barton said he would “build bridges” with the labor unions and other community members to present a unified front to the Legislature.

“If we can go together with our bargaining units and show that we need these resources to provide additional dollars to help with our employees, I’m more than willing to do that,” he said.

Trustee Carolyn Edwards asked Barton — who is the favored internal candidate among some community groups — whether he’d feel indebted to anyone if appointed as superintendent.

“I owe nothing to anyone,” he said. “My leadership is about putting the right people in the right place.”

Shonda Huery Hardman

Five months ago, Shonda Huery Hardman’s husband asked her if she would be willing to call Las Vegas home. He was being recruited by the Red Rock Radiology group.

Hardman said she visited the city, fell in love and then heard about the superintendent opportunity. A former teacher, Hardman has held administrative roles in a string of urban districts, including Houston, Boston and Chicago. She’s currently a consultant and urban specialist with FranklinCovey, where she helps educators improve leadership.

“I believe that nothing just happens,” she said. “I believe that all of those experiences have led me to this point right now.”

Hardman said her two daughters will attend Betsy Rhodes Elementary School next year. The Harvard-educated candidate said the district should raise its expectations for all students — regardless of their ZIP code or background.

She’s also a huge fan of the arts and said schools test students too much nowadays. Hardman, who minored in music, lit up when talking about her plans to ensure every child has access to the arts.

“I believe the arts provides such a level of discipline for students,” she said. “When you have to balance practicing your music and practicing and making sure you’re studying, that’s a whole different level of discipline.”

As for closing academic achievement gaps, Hardman said it comes down to the three C’s — consistent curriculum, collective accountability and celebration of methods and programs that work to improve student success.

Although the state-mandated reorganization affords principals more autonomy, Hardman said the district needs to make sure it doesn’t take too much away from their main role of providing instructional leadership. But she noted the district has an opportunity to prove how to make a decentralized operational model work.

As for her own leadership style, Hardman described herself as someone who takes care of those she’s charged with overseeing.

“I think at the end of the day, I have a heart to serve,” she said.

Jesus Jara

Economists like to compare Orlando and Las Vegas because they’re both anchored with tourist magnets — Disney World and the casino-dotted Strip.

Jesus Jara, the deputy superintendent of Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, thinks they’re similar in terms of education, too. They both boast a diverse student body and serve many at-risk students.

“The populations are so similar,” he said. “The similarities — it’s just what excites me.”

Jara said he moved to the United States as a 10-year-old knowing no English. He said he’s living his parents’ vision of the American Dream because of public education. It led to him becoming a teacher and, later, a school administrator.

Jara said his focus has always been on equity and access for all children, but he also believes school districts need to improve morale among teachers.

“What does that look like?” Jara said of improving morale. “We really need to have some conversations around that.”

The deputy superintendent also described himself as someone who has closed achievement gaps with limited resources. He said 17 of 19 high schools in Orange County have achieved a graduation rate above 90 percent.

Teachers should be rewarded for positive outcomes and guided when their students aren’t making the cut, he said.

“If you’re not performing, then let me help you perform so we can meet the needs of our students,” he said.

As an educator, Jara said he believes every child has a story and their life experiences may explain why they react a certain way to situations. Children nowadays face adult problems, he said.

“Ask them,” he said. “It’s not, ‘What did you do?’ It’s, ‘What happened to you?'’’

He would like to bolster mental-health services and partner with more community organizations to address students’ emotional needs.

Eva White

Retirement doesn’t suit Eva White, the district’s former interim chief financial officer.

She retired in June and headed back to her native Minnesota, where she’s director of human resources and administrative services for a school district in Sauk Rapids. But she never intended to leave Las Vegas forever.

“Yes, I am a midwestern girl originally,” she said. “This became my home.”

So when the superintendent position opened up, White determined it was the perfect opportunity to return and marry her instructional and operational backgrounds. She held a laundry list of titles in the school district, including special-education teacher, principal, director of human resources and assistant superintendent overseeing strategic resources and capital improvement. Her roles took her all over the Las Vegas Valley, interacting with families from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.

“It takes a village and each one of those villages was a little bit different,” she said.

White said educators need to look for ways to promote student achievement rather than maintaining the status quo. She recalled working as an assistant superintendent in east Las Vegas and visiting middle schools with four principals, so they could identify problems and solutions.

“You can’t stay in your building and keep doing what you’re doing and expect your results to go up if you don’t change anything,” she said.

White said she would err on the side of over-communicating as superintendent because most problems or unhappiness stem from communication snafus.

White also acknowledged the budget woes that came to light shortly after her retirement, saying she became aware of several issues near the end of her tenure. Those included money the state owed for kindergarten programming, the arbitration victory for the administrators’ union and special-education funding the district wasn’t going to receive from the state.

White served as interim CFO — a role that had been in flux — for less than half a year.

If chosen as superintendent, White said she would make sure the district’s finances are transparent and easily understandable.

“These are not my dollars. These are the public’s dollars,” she said. “If they want to know where they are, they should be able to see.”