Superintendent Interviews Recaps, Comments, and Transcripts
Hello all!
A quick recap of the format and content of last night’s superintendent candidate interviews (with a few of my own editorial comments at the end). To aid folks’ access to this recording, I created transcripts from the txt file provided by the Media Arts Studio.
Interview 1: Magaly Sanchez Transcript (20 questions)
Interview 2: Dr. Lourenço Garcia Transcript (11 questions)
Interview 3: David Murphy Transcript (14 questions)
09.25.2025 - Superintendent Interviews Recording
**Please note that I have mostly eliminated any crosstalk between the participants, except where I felt the text provided insight or perspective into the interviewee's approach to the conversation. My edits for brevity are denoted by //.**
Each interviewee was allotted 45 minutes for a very structured conversation, with two students (Eva Ashraf, Roz Patterson) asking each candidate between 11 to 20 questions. Questions were pulled from a pool of about 75 - 80 community responses submitted prior to yesterday’s event. While each candidate responded to the same questions in the same order, candidate response times varied during each interview. This impacted the number of questions that each candidate could address. Dr. Carolyn Turk moderated the night as a whole; there was no audience Q&A or one-on-one audience-candidate interaction. The Harvard Crimson article "Superintendent Finalists Take Questions, Commit to Equity in Public Forum," covers the rest.
AMC Editorial Comment, Opinions & Requests for Follow-Up
Magaly Sanchez, Boston Public Schools
First Impression: Peppy but not saccharine. Young and energetic with a deep knowledge of her own areas of expertise – but possibly not enough operations experience? Startlingly concise – she got through all 20 questions with about 15 minutes of time left over. Worth further investigation.
Strengths: Expanded learning opportunities; community partnerships; I really liked that she said that family input should be solicited for clear purposes and with intentionality regarding feedback, as well as clarity on use of caregiver feedback.
I Have Notes: Budget experience; her preparation into CPSD’s specific strengths, weaknesses, and peculiarities didn’t strike me as robust as I would have preferred.
Responses that delighted me
00:18:38,467 - Sanchez: //Um, so as a high school leader, I always hoped that my superintendent would actually be in my school more consistently//and that they really had a very clear understanding of what was happening within the school.// Um, you know, as a school leader//sometimes your job description doesn't really outline that it's your job to actually be outside picking up all of the garbage so that when students actually walk into school, they feel welcomed and they feel a sense of belonging.//What I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of things that a school leader definitely has to do as a school superintendent. If we take the opportunity to ensure that we're supporting with the operational part, our, our, our school leaders could really become those strong instructional leaders that we need. Um, they can be in the classrooms having conversations with teachers, doing observations, providing meaningful feedback so that that way our instruction, especially at the tier one level, can begin to shift and change.”
Dr. Lourenço Garcia, Revere Public Schools
First Impression: Look…okay. He had a beautiful voice, good stage presence, good rhythm, and he very well could be a brilliant educator. But there have been some pretty recent, pretty googleable events that lead me to question his judgment, at least in his personal life. And full disclosure: I’m from the Midwest. It’s not a place where it’s seemly to say “I” quite so much. (That one just might be me.)
Strengths: Engaging families in curriculum design; peer to peer professional development; social-emotional learning for teachers.
I Have Notes: He rambled and doubled back on some areas in the conversation; the food services question really threw him. (Then he covered in a way that struck me as disingenuous.) I question his fluency regarding neurodivergence and inclusion.
David Murphy, Cambridge Public Schools
Can’t Have A First Impression About The Home Candidate: Murphy is a controversial but known quantity in CPS. I’ve had multiple conversations with him throughout the Kennedy-Longfellow shutdown, and I believe that he is genuine in his efforts to center public education in public policy and to create environments where teachers are well-positioned to succeed. What I hope will happen next: I’ve been told that School Committee members have spoken with multiple educators over the past two weeks. That’s a good thing. Because to me, the educators who have to do the work and be supervised by the School Committee’s pick are the ones who matter most.
Strengths: I was pleasantly surprised by a few things: His response to the food services question was substantive; I especially liked his suggestion of developing a student advisory council for food services. He also discussed neurodiversity and inclusion as part of getting to real equity – the pull quote there (ums redacted; response edited).
01:03:04,267 Murphy: //I think//goes to the heart of the question of whether or not, as an organization, we're going to truly be grounded in equity or not. Um, because there's nothing more inequitable in my experience than a school community that sees the students or families//with a particular learning style//as something separate and apart from the full school community. And I think that//the first thing that we have to do to make sure that every member of the community is embraced and supported in a way that they are entitled to be embraced and supported is to make sure that the leaders of the school understand that that is what the organizational expectation is, and that if you foster a really strong culture, as I was talking about a moment ago, and it's not inclusive of the community in its entirety, then you failed.
To be clear: This idea of separation vs inclusion – on many axes, with many iterations – is at the heart of why I am running for School Committee.
I Have Notes: Addicted to the word synergy (though it didn’t pop up last night!); speaks in baseball terminology very frequently; it has occasionally taken me all my might and power to diagram some of his sentences to the point of easy translation. Occasionally wildly overconfident to the point of hubris.
And finally – while much of his career has been spent in the support of educators, he himself is not an educator. That’s a really big one for a lot of folks.
Thanks, all, and more soon!
—amc
