The decision will come at Mercer Island’s next scheduled board meeting, the Seattle-area district has announced.

Baldwin said her job prospect won’t dull efforts to win Washougal voter approval of a $42 million school construction bond request.

The Washougal school board is expected to submit the bond measure for Clark County’s May 20 ballot when it meets Tuesday evening.

“I will work very hard to pass this bond,” Baldwin said this morning. “I told the board, if I were selected (by Mercer Island), there’s not an ounce of lame duck in me.”

The proposed bond would pay for a new kindergarten-through-eighth grade campus, to be built on Jemtegaard Middle School property. It would pay for building improvements for all district schools and at Fishback Stadium.

In her second year at Washougal, her first superintendent position, Baldwin said the Mercer Island opening was too promising to ignore.

The affluent district offers top-notch student performance and a deep tax base. It also would put Baldwin close to two adult daughters, she said.

“It was a unique opportunity that came to me, and I decided it was a good one for me to explore,” Baldwin said.

She called school board and community interviews and a tour of Mercer Island schools last week a rare and “exciting” opportunity to learn. “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything,” she said.

Baldwin has more than 30 years experience in Clark County education, at the Battle Ground and Evergreen districts and Educational Service District 112.

Her two competitors for the Mercer Island job are Gary Plano, Mercer’s interim superintendent, and Richard Canfield, an assistant superintendent from Connecticut.