The Cambridge Education Association called Thursday for a restart to a Cambridge Public Schools superintendent search process, saying that a controversial former Vermont educator is one of four finalists for the role. Someone close to the proceedings said that the person has denied being a finalist, and instead said they got a “letter of regret“ that they would go no further toward being considered for the job.
“I haven’t heard anything regarding my being a finalist,” said Adam Taylor on Thursday in a brief online exchange.
Taylor, once superintendent of Rutland City Public Schools and before that an educator in Oakland, California, came to wider public attention in 2019 when he spoke at a Black History Month college event. He gave a shocking answer when asked a softball question: the most important thing first-year teachers need to know.
“I’ll use an Oakland analogy … a pimp has to groom, he has to get to know a young lady in order to get her to go out and sell her body to get him money,” Taylor said, according to reporting by Kate Barcellos of the Rutland Herald. “It’s about building that relationship that then gets her to go out and do something that she would not do … it’s a foul analogy, but it makes sense. It’s about building the relationship. Similar to a Catholic priest … similar to a pedophile … it’s about building those relationships where there’s trust, where I will do whatever you ask me to.”
The response was so striking that Harpers magazine ran an excerpt from the Herald satirically, labeling it “a lecture on education” with the keywords “teaching,” “Vermont” and “pimps.”
After remaining in Rutland until the end of the 2020 school year, Taylor has worked as an educational consultant for the past five years, with his LinkedIn profile noting skills as a school turnaround expert, community schools expert and motivational speaker.
A message was left Thursday with Taylor through his online work profile, to which he replied briefly to say he has heard nothing from a Cambridge search committee.
That there are four finalists in the Cambridge search process, which must be decided before municipal elections Nov. 4, was announced Tuesday by mayor E. Denise Simmons in a summer meeting of the committee.
The names of all four are expected to become known Friday, according to a timeline released at the meeting, while a check of references – even criminal records – is underway, said Simmons and her educational liaison, Carolyn Turk, a former Cambridge Public Schools deputy superintendent.
That means that people outside Cambridge are being alerted to candidacies before Cantabrigians – and in this case that has brought committee member Elizabeth Hudson alarmed phone calls.
“What on earth are you thinking?”
Two weeks ago, Hudson said, she was called by two appalled people from other school districts as a result of the reference-check process.
Hudson, urging transparency on the search process, said she was asked by the callers: “What on earth are you thinking?” But people who have been in contact with Taylor since have said he is not at the moment a finalist candidate, Cambridge Day has learned, even before Taylor spoke for himself.
Perhaps this meant the process was working, member Richard Harding said.
“You start to talk to people in different places, you’re going to get a very different understanding of the [candidate]. Whether that is credible or not, you can decide. But these background checks at this level are not like, ’Hey, did you like the person?’ It’s a very extensive thing, which you’re looking at the professional record, you’re looking at their character, you’re looking at social media, you’re looking at all the things that one might look at to just make sure that you’re getting a person of integrity and a person of character,” Harding said, noting that “I’ve been in a search where we came back with three finalists, of which one we could not even interview.”
Upsetting to teachers
Simmons and vice chair Caroline Hunter were asked Thursday for comment about Taylor’s candidacy and the labor group’s letter, but did not immediately respond. They have been working with a consultant called The Equity Process on the search.
Taylor’s candidacy has been confirmed to Cambridge Day by someone with knowledge of the process.
That’s upsetting to Chris Montero, the head of the labor group, who leads a group with 1,500 members – many of them teachers.
“If Cambridge Public Schools and The Equity Process were not aware of the candidate’s comments, this is nothing short of gross negligence and incompetence. If the district and its consultant were aware, this is a callous and calculated decision to present a false choice to the Cambridge community,” Montero said. “Our community deserves school leaders who lift students and educators up, not tear them down with crude, harmful analogies. This process has lost all credibility and must stop now.”
A political cost
Committee elections have drawn an unusually large number of candidates this year – 18 for a six-seat committee, when the average number of candidates dating back to 2003 has been 10.
Hiring practices and other points of frustration have been mentioned by some challengers for the surge in candidates. The School Committee ousted former superintendent Victoria Greer last spring, a decision anticipated after months of complaints of “botched hiring practices” and “mistreatment” of district staff.
David Murphy, former chief operating officer of the district, has served as interim superintendent since and is considered a candidate for the permanent job.
In an email newsletter Thursday under the subject line that “something’s wrong” with the search process, candidate Eugenia Schraa Huh lays out widely heard complaints about the opacity of the search – a complaint shared Tuesday by Hudson and departing committee member Rachel Weinstein – and its disjointed nature, as well as its missed deadlines. Huh shared a timeline gathered by fellow challenger Jess Goetz, who said Tuesday she has been trying to follow the search progress and come out frustrated.
Huh wondered if the choice of consultant was playing a role. “The firm’s website projects a less-than-polished image, with many broken or faulty links and,” Huh said, “only one concrete example of its work, which is the contract with CPS.”
“Worse, it seems that at least one of the finalists is a poor choice,” Huh said.
History of hiring
In a public letter to the committee and School Committee on Thursday, there were signs that members of the public are also upset. “I agree with the CEA – if one of the candidates is calling educators ’pimps’ and students ’prostitutes’ in Rutland, Vermont, causing a scandal there, then this process of selecting four out of 20 applicants to go further is out of control. Either it is a manipulative or an incompetent process,” Lauren Gibbs wrote. “Seems to me that except for member Hudson, no one else in authority in Cambridge seems to be paying attention!”
The membership of the search committee isn’t known, but it includes three members of the School Committee. Members of the committee signed nondisclosure agreements to not talk about their work, Simmons said.
This is not the only troubled search process in the district, though, considering that hiring practices was one of the reasons Greer’s contract was terminated.
A parent recounted her experience in a Wednesday email to Cambridge Day of serving on an interview committee recently for an assistant principal candidate at an elementary school. “At the first interview for one of the finalists … I spoke up to ask if anyone was aware the candidate was on administrative leave from his current position as principal at another school,” the parent said, noting that staff from the human resources department were present. “They were not aware [and] seemed quite surprised and concerned.”
“I found it alarming that they were unaware. Apparently CPS HR does not conduct basic Google searches on candidates. I and one of the other parent reps had found the same information online the night before,” the parent said. “We both did a quick google search.”
A stronger
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How is this possibly the person you’re putting forward as a finalist? We have seen this same small circle of people hand-pick the last two superintendents, and we all know how that turned out. Enough is enough. This process is a sham, and the public has been kept completely in the dark.
Mayor Simmons needs to stop ramming this through without real community input. Our students can’t afford another three years of a failed experiment, more contract buyouts, and more quiet settlements.
This is truly a scandal. The school committee leadership appears to have outsourced the candidate search process to a consultancy focused on DEI training that was only founded in 2021 and that, based on its website, has no apparent experience in executive recruitment. This firm then followed a process so opaque and standard-less that even school committee members were kept in the dark about timelines, selection criteria and procedures. Who will now be held to account for this?
https://theequityprocess.org/
@rivergoddess
You are absolutely right that the process has been a sham. However, what can we expect when this has been the norm for the last umpteen years. One excuse after another.
First of all, the company, The Equity Process, should be fired; clearly incompetent (why doesn’t the city hire a company called The Merit Process).
Secondly, we have to search for a superintendent who has only one thought in mind. That is to get the students to learn to read, write, do math and be able to think logically, so that they can eventually become productive members of society. Above all, that should be the goal.
For generations, this city has not educated its students to the fullest extent of their abilities.
This simply must change and now is the time to do it.