With a vote for Cambridge superintendent coming Monday, the three finalists for the job participated in a final round of interviews last week with the School Committee – the last public event in a highly criticized search.
Each finalist was given 90 minutes Tuesday to answer the same 20 questions surrounding communication with community stakeholders, closing achievement gaps, addressing racial equity and collaboration and management skills.
The finalists – David Murphy, the interim superintendent in Cambridge; Lourenço Garcia, assistant superintendent in Revere; and Magaly Sanchez, chief family advancement officer in Boston – highlighted the experience in their home districts and said their priorities include improving communication with the community and narrowing achievement gaps.
What role would communication and transparency play in your work as superintendent?
Sanchez highlighted an aim to “build consistent feedback loops,” ensuring parents and community members can expect communication from the district routinely and better understand where their feedback is being used.
Garcia emphasized the need to take into account the diversity of the district when boosting communication efforts. “We have so many parents who are immigrants, and language is power,” Garcia said. “We will have to ensure that communication is passed onto those families in multiple languages.”
Murphy said he intends to decenter the “central office” to better promote communication not just between the superintendent and the community, but between the community and stakeholders at all levels of decision-making.
We still see significant academic gaps and behavioral problems with our black and brown students, especially boys. How do you propose to address this issue?
Committee vice chair Caroline Hunter amplified the question when she compared Cambridge Public Schools to “the tale of two cities” described by the Concerned Black Staff Report in 1987, in which students of color were found to not be getting the same education as white peers.
Cambridge was ranked the fourth-most-diverse district in Massachusetts last year by Niche, a real estate and education ranker.
Garcia said he would build upon the district’s equity plan, drafted by the Cambridge Public Schools Office of Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, as a means of closing academic gaps.“We need to continue to build on the legacy of that plan, but I want to make sure that the work is done authentically, not on the surface,” Garcia said.
Murphy said he believes that closing gaps comes down to analyzing data, supporting educators and “being insistent that there are high standards across the board for all students.”
Sanchez referred to her own work in the New Bedford school system, where she sought to remove barriers to access advanced learning opportunities, including International Baccalaureate courses, as a means to close academic gaps.“Access and participation was really important, but being ready was even more critically important,” Sanchez said.
Differentiation in instruction often doesn’t happen effectively in practice, leaving many students without instruction that appropriately challenges them. What would you do in this scenario?
Differentiation in instruction has been a focal point of committee candidate campaigns and superintendent process this year, and was one of the clearest points of consensus between finalists during Sept. 25 community interviews.
Sanchez said she believes differentiation in instruction can come down to scheduling. During Tier 1 instruction – foundational instruction provided to all students – there should be no “pull outs” of students for other courses or “services,” she said, explaining that when she was a high school principal in Providence, students were allotted blocks of time in the school day for specialized instruction.
Murphy said a lack of differentiation in instruction is a problem across all public schools. Cambridge has the resources to be able to do differentiation better, and ultimately it comes down to being “better organized” and having more “accountability,” he said. “The difference between us and all these other school systems that are struggling with this is, we’re funded to do it, and that means that our expectations have to be higher.”
Garcia offered a reminder of the stakes of differentiated learning.“Studies have shown time and time again that if a child cannot read by fifth grade level, then the chances for the child to become illiterate is strong,” Garcia said. Only by “investing in pre-K education” can the district address the “root causes” of disparities in learning.
The final vote
The interview session also focused on the candidates’ experiences with school finance, placing ethics above personal achievement, crisis management, preparation of upper school students and addressing other racial and learning disparities in the district.
The candidates focused on their experiences in addressing these issues in previous school districts and shied away from grander policy solutions.
There was no mention during the daylong session of Garcia’s legal affairs – a $750,000 crypto investment loss and subsequent lawsuit – or about the search process, which has been questioned and criticized over scheduling, missed deadlines, community engagement, the hiring of an outside search firm and extent of background searches into the candidates.
Member Elizabeth Hudson told The Boston Globe that the process will likely continue normally. “We have a couple of strong finalists. We owe it to the students and the families and the educators of Cambridge to move forward and choose the best leader,” Hudson said.
A recording of the interview session will be posted on the CPS website, according to the district. As of Saturday, with two days before a decision, the location of that posting wasn’t clear. A search of the website turned up nothing.
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