What’s up with the superintendent search timeline?

2019 - 2025 have seen an enormous amount of institutional churn, including COVID-19, Superintendent Salim’s early resignation, Superintendent Greer’s hiring and firing, interim Superintendent David Murphy’s very active tenure, and the final stage of the Innovation Agenda capital building plan.  

It’s hard to stay focused with that kind of leadership turnover. It’s easy to adopt a mindset of quick fixes over long term commitment. And it’s definitely almost impossible to accurately capture or act on the input of all stakeholders affected by district-wide decisions. 

What I know: The current Cambridge School Committee has a statutory obligation to select the next superintendent by the end of their terms as school committee members. On July 15th & 16th, three school committee members (Mayor Simmons, Vice Chair Hunter, Member Harding) & 14 community members interviewed semi-finalist superintendent candidates. Operating via consensus, this group will select finalists for the School Committee’s review. No date has yet been set for superintendent finalist candidate interviews.

What I don’t know: Who’s going to be the next superintendent, what their priorities will be, and how effective they’ll be as a manager and executive.

Edited to add

Jess Goetz (also running for Cambridge School Committee this year) put together this amazing cheatsheet to the superintendent search process.

Elizabeth Hudson (School Committee member, incumbent, running for re-election) stated that it’s her understanding that Committee and community members participating in the semi-finalist interviews are under NDA. Reference checks are currently being done. Finalists will be interviewed publicly, and will come to tour the District and meet the staff in the fall.

The next regularly School Committee meeting will be on August 5th, 2025. A formal update may (or may not, I guess!) be made at that time.