Three Cambridge schools will welcome new principals at the start of the summer and the district also hired two new administrators, including a legal counsel. 

All three of the new principals announced on Thursday evening are familiar faces within the school system. Allan Gately Gehant, who has been interim principal at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, will now have the post on a permanent basis. At the elementary school level, the principal at Fletcher Maynard Academy will be Genteen Jean-Michel, currently principal of Cambridgeport. Jean-Michel’s job will be filled on an interim basis by her current assistant principal, Michael Macchi, who became assistant principal two years ago after being a principal at a Boston public school. 

Also in July, the district will welcome two more administrators — Tamara “Tamii” Stras will become assistant superintendent of secondary education and Carolyn Weisman as legal counsel. A third position, assistant superintendent of elementary education, remains open.

Stras comes to the district after spending five years as principal of Newton South High School. Weisman is currently Newton’s assistant city solicitor. 

Gehant worked in various administrative roles at CRLS for 25 years before becoming interim principal in 2024. Among the school’s ongoing challenges are a chronic absenteeism rate of 36%. 

The search for a new leader at elementary school Fletcher Maynard Academy began in February, when the district announced that Bobby Tynes would leave the school for a district-level administrative role. The district did not provide a reason for the move, though Tynes did face allegations of creating a “retaliatory culture” by a school committee member in December. 

Principals and administrators often shift between district schools. Tynes, for example, was an assistant principal at CRLS and an interim principal at the Peabody School before moving to Fletcher Maynard Academy.  

Jean-Michel started her career as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools and served as a principal in Brookline and Boston before becoming principal of the Cambridgeport School six years ago.

In teacher satisfaction data collected on the district from the previous two school years, Cambridgeport scored among the lowest of any school in the district, trailed only by Fletcher Maynard Academy. Slightly more than half of Cambridgeport teachers reported a sense of belonging and positive school climate, while a little over a third of teachers reported they received quality feedback and coaching in the most recent data.

It remains to be seen whether the Fletcher Maynard Academy community would prefer a newer face to lead the district’s school with the highest percentage of high-needs students — 78% of the student body is from a low income home, an English-learner, or has a disability, according to data from the Department of Elementary and Middle School Education.

The district has faced backlash for certain hiring practices, primarily under former Superintendent Victoria Greer. Now many parents are calling for a change in leadership at Graham and Parks School, where Principal Kathleen Smith is involved in an alleged discrimination lawsuit for terminating a substitute teacher who uses a wheelchair. No formal indication has been made by the district that a leadership change is to come at Graham and Parks.

Since Superintendent David Murphy was named to the role permanently earlier this year, the district hired Melissa Bolden as the director of community and family engagement and former CRLS principal Damon Smith as Chief Operating Officer.