Cambridge School Committee Unveils Plans for ‘Successful’ Year, Punts Superintendent Search Talks

Cambridge School Committee members outlined plans for a “successful school year” but postponed talks on the search for a new superintendent during a Tuesday meeting, the first of the fall semester.

Discussions on the hunt for a new superintendent — including a timeline proposed in a joint motion by members José Luis Rojas Villarreal, Rachel B. Weinstein, and David Weinstein — were delayed to the Sept. 17 School Committee meeting. The move comes months after former Superintendent Victoria L. Greer’s contract was prematurely terminated in late May.

Though the School Committee met on June 18 to appoint former COO David Murphy as interim superintendent and outline responsibilities and expectations for the permanent role, the committee has yet to provide further information on the search process.

The proposed timeline — which was originally submitted for the June meeting — recommended the permanent superintendent hiring post go live on Sept. 15. The motion also proposed that the School Committee appoint a new superintendent by Dec. 16 for the 2025-26 school year.

Prior to the meeting, Simmons wrote a letter addressed to School Committee members detailing the efforts the group will take ahead of the superintendent search. According to the letter, the School Committee will convene at a retreat on Sept. 26 to discuss and align priorities for the search process.

In addition to the retreat, committee members will engage in two training sessions to refine the search process: a diversity, equity, and inclusion training and an “in-depth” session with Glenn Koocher ’71 — executive director of Massachusetts Association of School Committees and former Cambridge School Committee member — on hiring best practices in October, Simmons wrote.

Though Simmons’ letter did not allude to opportunities for community feedback, the timeline motion proposed “community surveys” to be sent out on Aug. 5 and for feedback to be compiled for “top candidates” later in the process. It is unclear whether parents have received surveys.

In interviews with The Crimson following former Greer’s firing, parents expressed hope for a transparent and communicative hiring process, a sentiment that has not relented.

“Educators, caregivers, and community members expect to be included meaningfully in the process from the beginning,” Dan Monahan, president of the Cambridge Education Association — Cambridge’s educator union — said in a public comment.

In an email to The Crimson following her public comment, Lilly Havstad, a parent at Graham & Parks Elementary School and History & Literature lecturer at Harvard College, expressed concern about a potentially rushed superintendent search.

Havstad wrote that if Murphy agreed to stay in the position for two years, “I would urge the School Committee to consider a two year search timeline and dedicate the first year to holding a series of community input meetings with educators and caregivers.”

At the meeting, Murphy also delivered a presentation on goals and plans for a “successful school year.” Alongside “mission” and “data,” “culture” was identified as a focus for the 2024-25 school year.

“We have a singular mission that cannot be advanced in the absence of a strong professional culture,” Murphy said.

Staff and caregiver climate surveys for the 2023-24 school year, released in late February, revealed lackluster results, with staff perceptions of wellbeing, feedback, and coaching falling below the 20th percentile nationally. The disappointing scores incensed parents and were mentioned frequently in public comments against Greer’s leadership last spring.

In the presentation, CPS Chief of Academics and Schools Lendozia Edwards and CPS Director of Professional Learning & Leadership Chad Leith said that CPS will mobilize its 91 designated evaluators to use data in providing staff with more effective and more frequent feedback.

Following the presentation, members voiced their support for the district’s new focus.

“We used to run a district where we never removed a teacher, and we saw stagnant at best student achievement for Black and brown students, not one teacher was removed for years,” member Richard Harding, Jr. said.

On the 2023 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test, 36 percent of Black third-graders at CPS met or exceeded expectations on their English Language Arts test, compared to 79 percent of their white counterparts.

“I honestly believe that teacher evaluation is the holy grail of public education,” Harding said. “I think that if you do this well, over time, you’re going to see a distinct and pronounced movement in the right way around student achievement.”

Still, not everyone was convinced by Murphy’s plan.

“To truly shift the climate in many of our schools, we need more than walkthroughs by administrators,” Monahan said in a public comment.

“The proposals I read in the draft slideshow for tonight are orders of magnitude more ambitious than anything we have yet undertaken,” Monahan said. “To ensure the effectiveness, we need to make sure that we make those changes together.”

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.