Fired School Leader Took Many Risks

Bobbie J. D’Alessandro sat in her snappy red suit and high heels awaiting the verdict on her time at the helm of Cambridge’s public schools.

Though they came to decide the fate of their superintendent, the school committee hadn’t dressed for the occasion. They came to last Thursday’s meeting in their usual—quilted poncho tops, sneakers, nothing louder than earth tones.

D’Alessandro is distinctly not from Cambridge.

The lifetime education administrator from Florida used to run the Fort Myers schools. When she arrived in Cambridge five years ago, she was deposited in a district splintered by political factions, where the school committee shares the stakes with groups of diehard parents.

She imported many of her Florida administrators and brought her Florida approach. She and her “leadership team” set about writing goals for the district, drafting standards and initiating long processes for educational reform.

But last week she faced the pent-up frustrations of the school committee—confronting nearly unanimous accusations that her processes took too long, accomplished too little and left too many people out.

She acknowledged that, if the committee kept her on, she would change her ways to be more in line with the Cambridge style of involving parents at every step of the way.

“I have to be very strong, very clear and maybe a different kind of Bobbie D’Alessandro,” she told the committee. “I have learned and experienced over the past year that clarity is very important and that you have to be the superintendent that stands for something.”

But when the verdict came back, it came as a 6-1 vote not to renew her contract and to send the transplant on her way again after her term expires in September.

D’Alessandro and her leadership team scurried away from the meeting.

She says the outcome took her by surprise.

“I really thought they might extend me for a year,” she says. “Of course I’m hurt by it but they are the boss of this organization and they had a decision to make.”

‘Heavy Stuff’

Last week’s decisive action settled long-standing tensions between the school committee and the superintendent.

Even though he was elected only a year ago, first-time committee member Alan C. Price says he already ran out of patience for D’Alessandro’s delays and miscommunications.

“If you’d held the vote back in June it would have gone similarly,” he says.

Criticism from Price and others centered on what D’Alessandro hasn’t done—communicating with parents and keeping up with the school committee’s demands.

When D’Alessandro had come under fire before, it had been for the drastic projects she was pushing through one after the other.

Soon after she took office, D’Alessandro revamped the district’s failing technical arts program and led a controversial redesign of the high school meant to even discrepancies among its five small schools.

She also focused on special education, hiring a new director and placing specialists in elementary schools.

Two years ago she merged the Fletcher and Maynard elementary schools, two under-performing programs in a black and Latino neighborhood.

And last winter she changed the district’s elementary school assignment plan to include socio-economic status, not just race, a move that drew national attention.

At each point, D’Alessandro assembled a temporary coalition of supporters, but gradually her relations with the people who run the schools—not just the school committee but the vocal parents it answers to—deteriorated.

Since last spring, when she proposed merging some of the city’s elementary schools to combat declining enrollment and a budget shortfall, her support has further waned.

School committee members and parents accused her of taking too long to churn out consolidation plans, and furthermore not even using the time to adequately consult families.

In recent weeks, hundreds of parents have turned out at committee meetings to protest the merger proposals. They used hours of the public comment periods to complain they had not been notified of changes that would affect their schools. Some had gone as far as to suggest that D’Alessandro be fired.

“I don’t think she had the ability to work with parents,” says parent Craig Kelley. “She never ever responded to our communications to her, not once.”

Alfred B. Fantini, who cast the lone vote for D’Alessandro last week, says recent events contributed to the committee’s decision to call it quits with the current superintendent.

“There was a lot of heavy stuff going on and I think that certainly played a role,” he says.

But other committee members say the turmoil over merger plans did not affect their vote. Joseph G. Grassi calls consolidation a “passing issue” and focuses instead on D’Alessandro’s failure to address long-term educational goals.

“It all had to do with student achievement,” Grassi says.

Price says mergers did factor into his vote—but not because of D’Alessandro’s specific proposals. He says her handling of the issue exemplified her tendency toward inefficiency.

“I think it’s pure and simple accountability,” he says. “Back in June, it was ‘I just need a few more weeks,’ and it was five months.”

As she enters her final months, D’Alessandro has already begun to follow a committee mandate that she involve families, administrators and school council members in brainstorming for a revised merger plan.

And Price told her at last week’s meeting that she might find the process easier to manage now that her fate has been decided.

“Without the burden of having to please us from now through September, I can’t wait to see you go into action, say what you need to say, do what you need to do and blow the doors off all the things that need to happen this year,” he said.

Nowhere To Turn

In 1997, D’Alessandro lost her superintendent job with the Lee County schools when the school board fired her in a dispute over a Bible studies class that the board approved.

The school committee’s decision last week did not come after a single battle. Instead, D’Alessandro has continually lost support—until she had nowhere to turn.

Even Grassi, usually one of her staunchest supporters, voted against renewing her contract.

Both parents and committee members say a lack of decisiveness mired D’Alessandro’s term.

“She failed to move forcefully,” says parent Leah Greenwald.

“We need someone that’s going to be a very strong figure who’s going to come in and say this is what the research shows and this is where you are and this is what you have to do to support children,” Grassi says. “We need someone who will articulate a clear-cut plan and a vision.”

But Fantini, her one supporter, says the decision to fire D’Alessandro stemmed from an opposite problem—the committee’s anxiety that she had overstepped her authority.

“I think the superintendent was starting to feel real comfortable being a strong educational leader and I get the sense that some of the members don’t want a strong educational leader,” he says. “They want someone they can micromanage and can control.”

He takes issue with the way the committee fired D’Alessandro—a process, he says, that ignored her concrete accomplishments.

A year ago, the committee wrote a to-do list for D’Alessandro, and last week D’Alessandro presented a list showing that she had completed or addressed all of the tasks.

Fantini says committee members judged D’Alessandro unfairly because they “didn’t really stick” to the expectations they had laid out.

He says he disapproves of the “condescending” way committee members praised D’Alessandro’s work and then promptly fired her.

“It was clear that that was just a really cruel process to put her through,” he says. “If you’re going to do it then do it and be done with it and do it in a respectful way.”

But other committee members defended the meeting, saying they acted professionally.

“I’m not going to apologize for being honest,” Grassi says. “If people are upset with that decision they can be upset with that decision.”

Some parents say D’Alessandro served as a “scapegoat” for internal problems with the committee, which had agreed to hire coaches to improve its relations with the superintendent.

But Price maintains that the committee’s own failures present a “completely independent” problem and had no effects on the contract decision.

According to Fantini, committee members never discussed what they would do if they chose not to renew D’Alessandro’s contract.

“There wasn’t a game plan,” he says. “You should be talking, because if you’re going to make a bold move like that you need to have A, B, C and D, and you’d better be prepared to have a game plan.”

With only a few months to find a replacement, Cambridge could find itself feeling the superintendent shortage that faces much of New England.

“I don’t know where they’re going to find a replacement,” says Cambridge Teacher Association President Paul Toner, who has praised D’Alessandro for addressing teachers’ concerns.

Price says that finding a new leader for the district will be “the first order of business” for the committee.

Already, committee members are planning to hire a search firm to find D’Alessandro’s replacement.

In the meantime, D’Alessandro has pledged to “work for the children of this city until I leave.”

“I don’t think Bobbie D’Alessandro is a lame duck superintendent,” Price says. “If she can move us forward on the consolidation plan, we’re going to keep moving.”

But Fantini says he fears the superintendent’s leaving will rob the system of the administrative team D’Alessandro assembled during her tenure.

“This is the first time that the superintendent has developed a strong educational team,” Fantini says. “I’ve been seeing and hearing good things.”

“They witnessed a really shabby process,” he adds. “They’ll make judgements [to leave] accordingly.”

But Grassi maintains D’Alessandro’s administrators will stay in the Cambridge Public Schools even after their leader leaves.

“The staff is really the link between the two superintendents,” he says. “They’re not here on the short term.”

—Staff writer Claire A. Pasternack can be reached at cpastern@fas.harvard.edu.