School Super Urged to Stay

A former school committee member publicly urged the body to extend the superintendent’s contract by at least two years last night, continuing the controversy surrounding the negotiations.

As she took the microphone, Nancy Walser appealed to the Cambridge Public School Committee to move on the issue that could take until August to be finalized.

“You must finish this contract,” said Walser, who served on the committee from 2000 to 2007. “It’s nearly April. A fourth of the year has gone by.”

The length and nature of Thomas Fowler-Finn’s contract has been at the center of back-and-forth negotiations after he narrowly won a contract extension by a 4-3 school committee vote in January. The committee continued these negotiations in a private executive session after last night’s regular meeting.

After the meeting, recently elected Mayor E. Denise Simmons—the swing vote in favor of Fowler-Finn’s contract extension in January—said that “you don’t want to rush something that’s so important.”

Walser lauded Fowler-Finn’s successful initiatives, such as “bench-marking” as a way to assess progress in schools. “Instead of just judging the schools from the test scores, this is more holistic and takes into account multiple measures,” she said, referring to the additional factors that include graduation rate and student discipline levels.

School Committee member Patricia M. Nolan ’80, who voted against Fowler-Finn’s contract extension, said after the meeting that she would still support a “zero” year contract for Fowler-Finn.

“I think what our district needs right now is not the current skill set the superintendent has,” she said.

Nolan, who says she is concerned about a perceived “discrepancy” between Cambridge schools’ reported performance and the official records, wrote a letter last month to the Educational Management Audit Council.

A letter written back by Council Chair Maryellen Donahue confirmed an assessment of the Cambridge system as “satisfactory.”

Donahue called this rating “very desirable, and not to be considered ‘average.’”

Walser cited this as “one more piece of evidence” for the school committee to consider as it fills in the details of the superintendent’s contract.

“When school boards turn over, it’s hard often to stick with initiatives that are working,” she said, calling it “foolhardy” not to continue Fowler-Finn’s contract.

“He can’t do anything in a year for school reform, it’s just not enough time,” said Walser, who favors a multiple-year extension. “A lot of people argue that it takes 10 years.”

Fowler-Finn has been serving as Cambridge public schools superintendent for four and a half years.

Nolan said she didn’t feel the needs of the district have been adequately dealt with over the past years.

“The district’s not where I think it should be,” she said after the meeting.

Jack Haverty, a former teacher in the district and president of the Cambridge Teacher’s Association, said he approved of Fowler-Finn’s “serious” approach to the job and lack of “political games.”

“As far as I’m concerned, he’s doing a very good job,” he said.

—Staff writer Vidya B. Viswanathan can be reached at viswanat@fas.harvard.edu.