School Committee Delays Vote on Controversial Superintendent Search Firm Contract

The Cambridge School Committee on Tuesday delayed a vote to formally approve a $40,000 no-bid contract with the search firm that ran the district’s search for a new superintendent, weeks after news of the payment first blindsided School Committee members.

Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons and Vice Chair Caroline M.L. Hunter, who led the search, quietly initiated the process to pay the search firm The Equity Process without informing the rest of the School Committee, which must now sign off on the move. Committee members will revisit the contract on Dec. 2.

Tuesday’s meeting, which saw the School Committee publicly discuss the contract for the first time, quickly erupted into confusion as some members questioned how the firm’s contract was executed without the School Committee approval.

“Why the hell is this on the agenda?” School Committee member Richard Harding Jr. said. “Nobody knows what we’re voting on, why it’s here.”

School Committee members voted 5-2 to push the vote on the contract until next month, with Harding and School Committee member Elizabeth C.P. Hudson dissenting.

The contract — obtained through a public records request by a parent and first reported by Cambridge Day last month — reignited controversy around a superintendent search process that faced extensive backlash over a perceived lack of transparency.

Cambridge first paid out a $9,950 contract with The Equity Process — just below the $10,000 threshold for a public bidding process — in May. Simmons and Hunter then initiated a process to procure an additional contract with the firm.

The two argued in a letter accompanying the move that, because The Equity Process was already engaged in the search, it would “disrupt the continuity of the search” for the School Committee to transition to another firm.

The second contract was dated Sept. 4 and paid The Equity Process an additional $40,000 for work on the superintendent search that included screening candidates, helping design interview questions, running background checks, and executive coaching. Much of the work assigned to the firm in its second contract, which was split into four phases, had already been included in the first.

At Tuesday’s meeting, School Committee members agreed that the phase for superintendent onboarding and coaching — scheduled to take place from Oct. 7 to Dec. 30 — should not happen.

The letter justifying the decision to forego competitive bidding on the second contract was sent on behalf of the entire School Committee. But in an October statement to The Crimson, Simmons and Hunter admitted that they did not fill in other members about the additional payment.

“In that collaborative navigation of complex rules and tight timelines, the step of securing explicit School Committee authorization for the additional funding was not taken,” the two wrote.

Simmons and Hunter both attended Tuesday’s meeting virtually, during which Hudson and Harding demanded to know how the payment was approved without the full School Committee’s knowledge.

“Quite frankly, I still don’t know how — on School Committee stationary — an action was put, as if School Committee endorsed,” Harding said.

Hudson noted that the contract surfaced only when a parent reviewed the School Committee’s budget, raising concerns that no one could explain how the $40,000 was spent.

“I think it would be totally, totally absurd to vote on this without knowing really basic stuff like that,” Hudson said.

Though no School Committee member could confirm how much money The Equity Process has already received beyond the initial $9,950 contract, School Committee members said they plan to send questions to City Solicitor Megan B. Bayer for her to answer at the Dec. 2 meeting.

Hunter, the vice chair who signed on to the October statement explaining the contract, said on Tuesday that “many of us only saw these documents once they were produced, so that the work that happened on the city side isn’t often disclosed to us in that way.”

“So much has been impugned by this lack of information,” she added.

—Staff writer Ayaan Ahmad can be reached at ayaan.ahmad@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AyaanAhmad2024.