August 27, 2015

Spending Other People's Money Society Alive And Well In Cambridge MA





HYA Associates' home office is in Rosemont IL, with branches in Jersey City, NJ and Palo Alto CA. What happened to Buy Local? Universities have presidential search committees which include students, faculty and administrators. Some of them employ consultants as the Cambridge School committee does. Does the city of Cambridge lack qualified individuals who may be able to identify superintendent candidates without spending taxpayer funds on consultants?

[From article]
Hank Gmitro, president of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, said on Thursday, July 2, during the firm’s first meeting with the School Committee. “It’s far more important that you find the right person than a person.”
The School Committee signed a $21,500 contract with HYA June 16, the national consulting firm that ran superintendent searches in Boston, Somerville and Lexington.
[. . .]
Mayor David Maher said the Cambridge School Committee hopes to hire the superintendent before the November municipal elections. The search, he said, would be extended if the board does not find a suitable candidate by October.
“It comes down to the election calendar and trying to get it resolved with this committee. It would be grossly unfair to a new committee when the old committee knew this was going to happen for over a year,” Maher said in a follow-up interview.
[. . .]
School Committee member Kathleen Kelly said
[. . .]
“We are isolated from the community. There’s even misunderstanding between the City Council and the School Committee and different ways that we consider the positive things that are going on with our school system,” [School Committee member Kathleen Kelly] said . “It is an opportunity for us to have people involved in understanding where the school system is really at and what they can contribute to the system, and to overcome some of those barriers that exist right now.”
“Through that process we can learn as well about what expectations other community members that are not parents and educators have in terms of what they would like the school system to be within the community,” she added.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150710/NEWS/150719677/?Start=1


Timeline set for Cambridge superintendent hire
By Sara Feijo
sfeijo (at) wickedlocal.com
Posted Jul. 10, 2015 at 8:36 AM
Cambridge Chronicle

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