Following a controversial search process, the Cambridge School Committee voted Oct. 6 to make David Murphy superintendent after 15 months in an interim role. Murphy called his tenure “a 15-monthlong job interview” in an interview with Cambridge Day.
As interim superintendent, Murphy oversaw the closing of the Kennedy-Longfellow School, the implementation of a universal preschool program and the completion of the Tobin Montessori and Darby Vassall Upper Schools and Community Complex. Now, he has to plot the future of the district.
His answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
What do you see as urgent to address in the district right now?
The opportunity and achievement gaps that are represented in our outcomes data. Achievement data is only valuable in the sense that it is evidence of the experiences that students are having in our schools. If over and over and over again the variables that seem to distinguish the types of experience students have are along lines of race and ethnicity, then that should be viewed as an emergency that needs to be addressed.
We have some significant issues around our professional culture. There is a need to reaffirm the focus of the organization on the well-being of students, as opposed to the priorities and desires of adults. To make that type of culture shift requires a lot of self-reflection on the part of all of us in the organization, and I think it requires an insistence on higher standards.
We are not getting all students to school on time. We get the vast majority of kids to school on time. We made all sorts of tweaks and adjustments over the course of the last year so that we had a much better start to this year than we did last year. But we are constantly one bad rainstorm, one construction project or one rainstorm on trash day away from a ripple effect that causes way too many students to get to school late. We are trying to do more than physics will allow us to do on a daily basis. And so we have to look at that and ultimately we have to make some adjustments.
Advanced learning and differentiated instruction have been big topics in recent forums and the interviews that I’ve watched. You said at a forum that Cambridge has the resources, and now it’s about accountability. What is your approach to advanced learning?
Part of grounding our work in genuine equity is the recognition that all students need different things, and our responsibility is to meet students wherever they are. It is not the responsibility of students to meet us wherever we are. I think that sometimes we misspeak when we talk about our goal should be to help students reach their potential, because I think part of the definition of being a student is that your potential is undefined. It is the school system’s responsibility to maximize each individual student’s potential. I think that is true for students with various learning challenges. We have to employ the resources at our disposal to make sure that supports are in place so that they can make the type of progress that they need to, and ultimately be positioned for postsecondary success.
Our students who are very well positioned to learn are never going to have their potential maximized unless we are keeping them fully engaged. And so to me, advanced learning is just one component of the need to have a truly equitable school system.
What’s your philosophy and strategy in handling communications with community members?
I really think it just comes down to having respect for the people you work for. I’m a public employee, so I work for the Cambridge community, and my responsibility is to be as clear and transparent as I can with respect to what I observe, and what my professional opinion is as to how we’re going to move the school system forward. I want to be able to have as constructive a discourse as possible within the community so that the people of Cambridge can understand what, from my perspective as a superintendent, we need to do and we need to change in order to make good on our goals and to advance our mission.
Can you speak to the difficulty in overseeing a decision such as closing the Kennedy-Longfellow School, and what you took from that experience?
My mom taught in one school for 32 years, and if a superintendent ever showed up and said that it’s in the best interest of students in the school district for Fallon Memorial School to go offline, that would have been a really difficult moment in my house. By far, the most difficult part was understanding the disappointment and hurt that would be felt by caregivers, from students and particularly by staff. Having said that, it was not a particularly difficult decision in terms of what had to be done for the best interests of students.
[Former K-Lo home] 158 Spring St. is a tremendous asset for us as a school system. It’s a large building capable of serving diverse needs of a diverse population of learners. It’s well situated in a neighborhood where we have a high concentration of families, and it’s an excellent campus.
It’s probably not news to you that parents and some members of the community have criticized this year’s superintendent search. Do you have a response to them?
I don’t have any comment on this particular search. What I would say is that every superintendent search plays out a little differently, and they’re very fact-specific. And for me, I would say, in some ways, I’ve just completed a 15-month job interview, and so I think I’ve been thoroughly vetted.
A stronger
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>>there used to be a common or a green or something right over where Garden Street and Mass.
Is Murphy trying to make a joke by forgetting that the green where Mass Ave and Garden Street meet is Cambridge Common, and it’s been there for 300 years?
I thought the choice of Murphy was a good one.
However, he says “I think that sometimes we misspeak when we talk about our goal should be to help students reach their potential, because I think part of the definition of being a student is that your potential is undefined.
Mr. Murphy, the first potential is to be able to read, write and do math at grade level. As one school committee member said “at the Cambridge Street Upper School, only six percent of low income students are at grade level for math.”
The key question is “why is that?” I, and many of my grade school classmates grew up in low income families. We learned to read, write and do math at grade level.
A low income student, does not mean you can’t learn. Many Nobels came from low income families.
So what is it Mr. Murphy? That is the key question and it appears that you have not sat down and thought about it. Unless you do, the city is going to have another generation of students who were failed by the system.