Mayor Simmons’ and Vice Chair Hunter’s super secret and totally legal contract

by Itamar Turner-Trauring
Last updated 29 Oct 2025, originally created 29 Oct 2025

The Cambridge Public School District (CPSD) superintendent hiring process was a fiasco. But why? Until last week I would have said it was due to incompetence. We now know it was much worse than that.

It’s a complex story, with bizarre yet alliterative references to pimps, priests, and pedophiles, a mysteriously secret contract, and legal trickery that (surprise!) isn’t actually legal, and new details coming out literally the morning I am publishing this.

But the conclusion is that this goes beyond incompetence: this is corruption. Mayor E. Denise Simmons and School Committee Vice Chair Caroline Hunter have violated both the public trust and that of their colleagues, and almost certainly broken the law.

As a result, I believe the Mayor and Vice Chair Hunter should resign. And if you are a voter, I would urge you to leave them off your ballot.

Voting details—omit these two candidates from your ranking:

E. Denise Simmons will be on your City Council ballot.

Caroline Hunter will be on the School Committee ballot.

To help you understand what happened, and how I reached this conclusion, I will:

Connect the dots to make clear exactly what the Mayor and Vice Chair did, and why it violates both the public trust and probably the law.
Consider a more positive interpretation of their actions, and how it too reflects badly on their judgment.

Taking care of the public’s money

Before getting to the details of the superintendent search, some background is useful.

Local governments and school districts have lots of public money to spend. When government officials give out contracts based on personal relationships, rather than choosing the best vendor, the result will often be:

Higher costs.
Worse quality.
Regardless of outcomes, a loss of trust in the institution.

To prevent these outcomes, Massachusetts law has specific requirements on how money must be spent in school districts (see page 6 of this summary):

Small amounts (below $10K): Pay standard market rates to a vendor who can successfully provide the service or product. A school can buy pizza for back-to-school night from the neighborhood pizza shop at standard market rates with no special process.
Medium amounts ($10K-100K): Ask at least 3 companies for quotes. The district must choose the lowest priced vendor who has “the capability to perform fully the contract requirements, and the integrity and reliability which assures good faith performance.”
Large (above $100K): Even more requirements, but not relevant in this instance.

The superintendent hiring process, in which we learn about the Mystery Contract

In order to hire a new superintendent, CPSD put out a call for proposals to hire an executive search firm to run the search process. The Executive Director of HR of CPSD rejected all of these companies, apparently since they either did not meet the requirements, or had overly high quotes.

So at a meeting on April 25th, the City’s Director of Purchasing suggested three options, based on the three categories above (small/medium/big). Per the minutes, the School Committee voted to approve using the small category of contracts: less than $10,000, with no need for multiple quotes. Choosing a vendor was delegated to the Mayor, who is also the Chair of the School Committee.

What actually happened is that two contracts were signed:

What the SC voted for: In May, CPSD hired a small firm known as The Equity Process (TEP) for $9,950 for a smaller scope.
Bonus mystery contract: In September, the City on behalf of CPSD signed an additional contract for $40,000 with TEP for the rest of the work. The work described is a superset of the first contract, continuing it to the end of the process.

The existence of this second contract was only discovered last week; all prior discussions of the superintendent process assumed a single, $9,950 contract.

Some totally, very definitely, and extremely legal maneuverings

This is where things start going wrong. We’ve already seen that signing this second, mysterious $40,000 contract far exceeded the purchasing remit given to the Mayor by the School Committee. It also:

Violated School Committee rules.
Almost certainly broke the law.

Bypassing their colleagues

The School Committee Rules have a $25K threshold for approving expenditures. And yet this expense was never submitted to or approved by the School Committee. In a letter to The Crimson, The Mayor and Vice Chair admit they made this expenditure without their colleagues approval, but blame staff for “[not advising that] this work should be placed before the School Committee for formal approval.”

At best, this means neither of them bothered to read the rules of a committee they chair, an embarrassing dereliction of duty.

At worst, this statement is not true and they deliberately chose to bypass the full School Committee.

Deliberately circumventing the law (is still not legal)

Next, we’re back to the purchasing law. The original attempt to hire an executive search firm talked about a single, cohesive service: executive search. Likewise, the $40,000 contract with TEP also describes the whole search process as one cohesive service, with multiple phases. Phase I is covered by the $9,950 contract, and the other phases by the second $40,000 contract.

Now, a service that costs more than $10,000 requires going through the process of soliciting multiple quotes from at least 3 vendors. How did CPSD manage to avoid multiple quotes for the cohesive service provided by the $40,000 contract with TEP?

They relied on a clause in the law that allows using a sole vendor if they are the “only practicable source for the required supply or service.” In CPSD’s justification letter, the explanation for using a single source is:

Secret sauce: Supposedly TEP has unique capabilities; in practice, this argument feels like weak sauce.
- “Customized equity-aligned strategies”: Given the contract cites industry best practices and research, presumably other vendors can provide equity services.
- “Proven ability to engage stakeholders effectively”: This is not a unique capability, it’s a minimum requirement for doing one’s job.
Contract-specific knowledge: TEP implemented the first step of the process, and therefore has all the relevant knowledge and relationships; switching vendors would be disruptive.

Of course, contract-specific knowledge could be used as an excuse to evade public purchasing laws for any contract with any vendor. All you would have to do is:

Sign a less-than-$10K contract for phase 1 of the contract.
Sign a single source contract for the rest of the money, explaining the vendor now has unique contract-specific knowledge that means only they could continue the process. As a bonus, throw in some mentions to their supposedly unique capabilities.
You can now pretend the law doesn’t exist and you don’t need to get multiple quotes for the work. Three cheers for legal loopholes!

Unsurprisingly, breaking up contracts like this is explicitly illegal according to the law:

“No person shall cause or conspire to cause the splitting or division of any procurement, specification, invitation for bids, request for proposals, proposal, solicitation, or quotation for the purpose of evading a requirement of this chapter.”

A handshake contract?

If we look at the $40,000 contract, we learn that it covers work that was already done by TEP in July and August. But the earliest legal document we’ve seen for the second contract was from August 15th, and the contract was signed September 4th. In other words, TEP was working for two months without a contract.

Now, TEP’s website states “all services begin only after a mutually established Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)”, an excellent policy for any consultant. Clearly, promises for payment were made long before any formal contract, and without following any district or legally-required processes.

The sole source justification letter, written a month and a half after TEP started working without a contract, seems very much like after-the-fact ass covering.

A vendor without experience (what could go wrong?)

Remember that legally, the district was required to hire a vendor with “the capability to perform fully the contract requirements.” And hiring capable vendors seems like a good idea in general.

So was hiring TEP for the full scope of the executive search a good idea? The answer should have been an obvious no.

However experienced they may be in equity-driven hiring, it takes additional specialized knowledge to hire someone to run an organization with a $280 million budget. There’s a reason the superintendent couldn’t be hired with normal HR hiring procedures. And as far as anyone can tell, TEP has never done an executive search.

Visiting TEP’s website as of February 2025:

On the front page there is no mention of executive search as one of their services, just of “Recruitment and Retention.” The description of this service: “A Closer Look at Policies, Practices, and Procedures For Hiring and Recommendations”. Only in June, after the contract with CPSD was signed, was executive search added as a service they provide.
There isn’t a single example of any sort of executive search on the cached page; there are no examples on the current website either.

Compare this to one of the vendors who submitted a bid. They have many examples and success stories, including hiring a superintendent for Denver Public Schools. It’s quite likely that this vendor has the capability to do an executive search for a school district. TEP? Not so much.

Bad outcomes, as predicted

All three of problems the purchasing law is supposed to prevent occurred in this instance.

Higher costs

JG Consulting provided one of the original bids for $40,000. They have plenty of experience doing executive searches for school districts.

TEP, with no relevant experience, was promised $49,950, almost $10,000 more than JG Consulting’s bid.

Worse outcomes

One candidate, who was a semi-finalist in the process, infamously gave the following advice to first-year teachers:

“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… 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.”

This information could’ve been found with a quick Google search. And this is just one of the many problems that could’ve been avoided with a more experienced firm.

In the end, none of the finalists were seen as better than interim superintendent Murphy. I don’t know whether he is the best choice or not, but it’s very likely that we missed out on good candidates due to a mismanaged process.

A loss of public trust

Whether it’s parents, the public at large, the teachers’ union, or even some School Committee members, the process was seen as deeply flawed, with plenty of embarrassing press coverage. And all of this loss of trust occurred even before the misspending of $40,000 came to light.

Mayor Simmons’ and Vice Chair Hunter’s responsibility and response

In a letter to The Crimson, Mayor Simmons and Vice Chair Hunter make clear that they were the people who hired The Equity Process and ran this process, and they strongly defend their decisions.

The Mayor and Vice Chair response tells a much more positive story than mine, of dedicated public servants who wish to hire the best possible superintendent for Cambridge’s children. Yes, they explain, they might have broken some rules. But if they did, it was by accident, or maybe it was CPSD staff’s fault. Regardless, everything they did was in the service of a good cause, and “oversight in process should not be conflated with bad faith in action.”

Even if we were to accept Mayor Simmons and Vice Chair Hunter’s claim that they acted in good faith, we can still judge their actions. Instead of the means, we can focus on the ends: did they succeed in what they set out to do?

The answer is no.

One of the candidates for superintendent role was the interim superintendent David Murphy. The Mayor and Vice Chair knew him personally; the three meet and work together on an ongoing basis. It seems clear that at least part of the Mayor and Vice Chair’s goal was to find someone who they thought would be better than Murphy:

If they had wanted him as the superintendent, none of this complicated cloak-and-dagger hidden-contract process would’ve been necessary.
In the final vote to choose a superintendent, both voted for another candidate. At the time Simmons noted that “…he’s not my first choice, nor my second, and it has nothing to do with him personally.”

Unfortunately for them, Mayor Simmons and Vice Chair Hunter mismanaged the process and hired a consultant without relevant experience. The resulting alternative candidates to Murphy were not compelling enough to convince the rest of the School Committee. In short, they sabotaged themselves and failed at their goal.

A summary: Bad process, bad outcomes

Mayor Simmons and Vice Chair Hunter led a process that:

Ignored their colleagues and violated School Committee rules.
Likely violated the law, splitting a significant purchase in what looks like a deliberate attempt to bypass the law’s requirements.

As a result, this process:

Wasted money.
Led to worse results.
Significantly damaged the public’s trust in CPSD, and as more details are released, will continue to damage the public’s trust.

Even considering just the results, it was a clear and embarrassing failure to achieve their own goal. And this failure was the result of their own mistakes.

What should happen next?

Mere good intentions are nowhere near sufficient for a public servant. Even lacking self-dealing, this whole process is clear corruption: public officials treating public money as something they can spend however they want, with no regard to rules or the law.

Mayor Simmons and Vice Chair Hunter should resign. It is unlikely, however, that they will this on their own, as they have made clear they stand by their decisions. So until the Office of the Inspector General gets around to investigating this—a complaint has been filed—it’s up to us to apply pressure on them.

That means not ranking them on your ballot. And it also means calling on them to resign even if they win reelection. New, important details literally came out the day I finished writing this, well into mail and early voting. Many voters have already voted without this new information.