Along with complaints from Cambridge parents and teachers about uncertain timelines, missed deadlines and a lack of community engagement in the search for a new schools superintendent, concerns have swirled about the search firm hired to aid a process that culminates in a vote next week.
The School Committee in May hired The Equity Process, a Bridgewater consulting firm specializing in equitable leadership development.
Though the firm was founded in 2015 and incorporated in 2021 by Cyndi Weekes Bradley, whose LinkedIn profile highlights leadership coaching and development, team building and change management, the firm’s annual reports to the state do not mention until this year that The Equity Process does executive recruitment. The first filing mentioning it was June 17, the month after the firm was hired and before a Cambridge Public Schools payment for $9,950 was completed July 8.
The district turned to the firm run by Weekes Bradley, who has more than 20 years of experience in the education sector, after it ran into trouble finding another firm to hire.
The Equity Process did not respond to emails sent weeks ago seeking comment.
The process comes to a close Oct. 6 with a committee choice among David Murphy, the district’s interim leader; Lourenço Garcia, assistant superintendent for Revere Public Schools; and Magaly Sanchez, chief family advancement officer for Boston Public Schools.
Conversations among parents online and in public forums have noted that all candidates are local, despite what was described as a nationwide search.
Cambridge superintendent is “one of the best jobs of its kind,” district parent Dan Farbman said. It pays over the average superintendent salary in a complex and troubled district that also “has the resources to actually solve some of the deep problems of public education in this country – a place where real antiracist education could happen, real transformative pedagogy could happen,” he said.
That a broader mix of candidates didn’t emerge might be laid to the School Committee not getting the help it needed from a search firm, said Farbman, a former civil rights lawyer who’s worked on public education. “If you look at the firms who submitted bids, they’re all firms with experience running national searches,” he said. “Instead, we cheaped out.”
Three firms, all rejected
The School Committee’s goal was to hire a company with experience in identifying and vetting applicants, members said in January. It initiated a public bidding process for an external search firm at its Jan. 28 meeting. Bids were open Feb. 7-27, according to public records, and three were received, ranging from $36,800 to $95,300.
The lowest was rejected because the firm was “not even close” to meeting the district’s minimum requirements, as committee member José Luis Rojas Villarreal put it at the committee’s March 19 meeting. The other two bids were reported rejected at an April 25 committee meeting by Ashley Pierre, executive director of human resources for the district, either for not meeting the minimum qualifications or for being out of budget.
For comparison, for its 2015 superintendent search, the city signed a $21,500 contract with Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates.
The district voted at the April meeting to pursue a process for a search firm outside of the competitive bidding process, using rules that allow direct hiring if a total project cost falls below $10,000. At its May 21 meeting, Pierre said an external firm had been identified and a purchase order was being put together. The completed purchase order was for The Equity Process.
Committee members did not reply to requests for comment about this decision, with the exception of Elizabeth Hudson. “We did have a long list of very specific requirements that nobody met,” she said.
Cambridge Educators Association president Christopher Montero said he believes the initial bidding process failed likely because it was initiated too late in the school year for a “legit national search” to be successful. “I haven’t talked to the individual firms that chose not to bid, but I assume they did not throw their hats in the ring because they felt like it was a bad sign that they’re trying to start this process so late,” Montero said.
Lowered standards
While it’s unclear if committee members feel the goal was met of finding a firm with executive search experience, it had already lowered its standards for a consultant on the way to its contract with The Equity Process.
Concerns about the district’s minimum qualifications were discussed at the committee’s Jan. 28 meeting. In particular, companies who wanted to bid for the work needed a minimum of three years of experience in higher-level education recruitment and five senior consultants. This was cited as too restrictive by Hudson and member Richard Harding.
“Every requirement we have in there is more work for us, more work for the firm,” Hudson said at the Jan. 28 meeting. “We should be thinking about the requirements as judiciously as possible.”
Pierre spoke on the importance of maintaining strict requirements to secure an established firm at the meeting. “While we would love to be able to partner up and help newer firms gain that skill set, I just don’t think that is the time right now. Especially with it being really hard getting a candidate pool in general as superintendent of schools,” Pierre said.
Harding agreed. “In some cases, a search like this, in a small firm, could consume every member of the staff,” Harding said at the Jan. 28 meeting.
Ultimately, a motion was passed reducing the number of required senior consultants from five to three – yet bids that came back the next month were still below the minimum requirements set by the committee.
The Equity Process has three senior consultants, according to its website, but only Weekes Bradley is identified.
Community response
When he looked at The Equity Process as a firm, “they seem great. There’s a lot of things they talk about as priorities that I share,” Farbman said.
But he and fellow parent search observer Jess Goetz – now a School Committee candidate – were asked to capture reaction to the work among the community. Both have been active in ongoing discussions online and in person, they said.
“I’m hearing from parents that it’s pretty confusing how we got to this point. Nobody really knows precisely what the process was,” Farbman said Sept. 8.
Goetz, who began tracking the search process months ago because she found it confusing and poorly explained, spoke Sept. 12 in a call about parent perceptions of how The Equity Process was chosen: that the initial round firms did not meet the expectations or requirements and “so were rendered imperfect and unavailable, so we somehow ended up with a group that was, frankly, completely unqualified.”
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/26172860-250929-jess-goetz-superintendent-search-process-tracking/?embed=1
“There has to have been a space between not 100 percent meeting expectations and requirements and being able to do it for less than $10,000,” Goetz said. “It’s almost like we just threw the baby out with the bathwater. We said, well, there’s nobody perfect, so we’re not even going to try to get good.”
Farbman called The Equity Process’ lack of experience in executive search puzzling for “a $300 million school district,” a reference to the year’s $280.1 million budget.
Montero too called The Equity Process “a firm that has never done a superintendent search.”
The superintendent finalists reflect the lack of experience of the search firm, Montero said, and “it’s really frustrating for the people of Cambridge to feel like they are the guinea pigs.”
The community’s confidence was shaken also by The Equity Process’ website, which had faulty links that defied attempts to learn about the firm. “There was definitely a feeling that they were kind of making it up as they went along,” Goetz said, though she has emerged from her observation of the process with sympathy for The Equity Process: “They were hired too late, too quickly, and they weren’t qualified. And they were kind of thrown under the bus.”
Called for a restart
Much of the criticism around the search has surrounded a lack of community engagement.
“I do not fault The Equity Process in this at all,” said Arjun Jaikumar, a district parent and School Committee candidate. “They were brought in late in the game. They’ve done their level best with the hand that they were dealt.”
The School Committee is preparing to vote on a final candidate, but like Montero and Goetz, Jaikumar wished the search had been paused until after a new committee takes over in 2026.
“I would see a new process starting with a new search done by a firm with experience in this space, starting once the new committee is in place in January, with a target of, I would hope, having a new superintendent in place in the fall,” Jaikumar said.
A call to restart to the search was made publicly Aug. 7 by the Cambridge Education Association, citing the overall process after learning an expected candidate had reached the vetting stage despite once saying publicly that teachers needed to build relationships with students in a manner similar to grooming by sexual predators.
The Boston Globe on Monday made public a court case involving Garcia, one of the finalists, that has been discussed for weeks in Cambridge as an open secret – the loss of $750,00 in a crypto investment that led to him suing a bank.
District parent and School Committee candidate Anne Coburn called for a town hall to address community concerns that could give the committee a venue “explain the process and to answer questions in a series of conversations, that feels far more satisfying to me,” Coburn said.
Coburn and Jaikumar reiterated their sentiments during public comment at a School Committee meeting held Sept. 2, but the process continued.
Reaching out to committee members for responses and information was largely unsuccessful. Harding said he would call Cambridge Day back with comment, but was then not available. When asked whether the city would consider restarting the search process, member David Weinstein would not comment and did not respond to additional requests for an interview.
Mayor E. Denise Simmons and members Rojas and Rachel Weinstein did not respond to emails or phone calls.
When vice chair Caroline Hunter was asked about the search for an external firm, Hunter responded that all important information was already public record, and she declined to comment further.
A final vote on a new superintendent is set for Oct. 6, the committee says, after Wednesday finalist interviews with the full School Committee.
This post was updated Sept. 30, 2025, to remove a reference to The Equity Process from a photo caption.
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The rank incompetence and utter lack of transparency is so appalling. No incumbents will get my vote.
It is entirely understandable why two key constituencies – educators and parents – are fed up with the incumbents on the school committee.
The main job of the school committee is to hire and supervise the superintendent. This process has not gone well. Yes, there were complications beyond their control, and yes, high quality candidates are few and far between.
But the decline in confidence is likely to lead to a lot of new folks being elected. I would not want to be an incumbent right now.
The School Committee’s actions cannot be defended.
There’s a reason that professional search firms charge a third of the salary of the position for which they are recruiting. It can’t be done with a budget of just $10k.
Choosing to cut corners on this is the textbook definition of penny wise and pound foolish. Why do so with the most important position in the system?
Was the Equity Process aware of the $750k crypto scam? There’s no good answer for that. If they were aware, how could they believe that such a person possibly be capable of leading a large district? If they weren’t aware, what else did they miss?
In their quotes for this article, the members of the School Committee do not provide much confidence that they will make a good choice, and the fact that the Equity Process and other committee members did not see fit to comment speaks volumes.
Restart the search. I always vote, and I will not be voting for a single incumbent.