On Wednesday, the board of the Collaborative for Educational Services, a Northampton-based nonprofit that offers support services to school districts across Hampshire and Franklin counties, was set to consider a vote on a contract for a new executive director.
However, in recent days, employees have begun speaking out about what they say are problems with the process for selecting that new leader, with unionized staff explicitly criticizing who the organization’s board has chosen for that role: current Northampton Public Schools Superintendent Portia Bonner.
The hiring process has provoked criticism from the leadership of the union representing CES staffers. Last week, they drafted a letter to the nonprofit’s board of directors arguing that Bonner is “ill-prepared to positively and proactively guide CES into the future.” A separate letter that 22 non-union employees from across the organization sent to the board on Tuesday expressed concerns about the organization’s overall selection process for the executive director position.
Now, it’s unclear whether the CES board will complete negotiations with Bonner on Wednesday.
Bonner did not respond to phone and email messages in recent days, nor did members of the collaborative’s administration. An email to the board of directors and its chairperson, Cathy Englehardt, went unanswered Tuesday afternoon.
Bonner’s tenure as superintendent of Northampton Public Schools, a role she has held since 2023, is set to come to an end after the academic year. On top of receiving poor performance evaluations from Northampton’s School Committee two years in a row, Bonner faced an overwhelming no confidence vote from the city’s school employees’ union in 2024 over what they said was her role as “an architect of cutting staff and programs” — an issue that has dominated Northampton politics in recent years.
Those aspects of Bonner’s professional history have drawn the concern of CES employees represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 509. In a Jan. 20 letter to the nonprofit’s board obtained by The Shoestring, CES’s union leadership described Bonner as a “combative and punitive leader” with a “long history of poor labor relations,” citing her time at Northampton Public Schools.
The separate letter that other staff sent on Tuesday focused instead on “the public process used to evaluate candidates, rather than on any individual candidate.” In that letter, staffers said that the board’s “interview process itself lacked sufficient rigor,” and cited what the employees saw as lack of staff input into the hiring process.
Later on Tuesday, Englehardt responded to leaders at SEIU Local 509, saying in a letter The Shoestring obtained that she would forward their concerns to the full board for discussion in a closed-door session. That discussion cannot take place on Wednesday, she added.
“I will need to convene a meeting in executive session with Dr. Bonner and her attorney present,” Englehardt’s response said. “Any complaint against an employee (in this case, someone who was offered a position) is heard and discussed in executive session with legal representatives from both sides present.”
CES provides educational consulting, professional development, and other support services to districts across Hampshire and Franklin counties, including running two schools for students with learning disabilities and social-emotional challenges. Its board is made up of school committee members from the districts it serves.
Founded in the 1970s as part of a state-authorized system of educational collaboratives, CES operates as a quasi-public entity that allows local school districts to pool resources and deliver shared services beyond what individual districts could provide on their own. According to CES’s FY2025 report, over 7,000 “children, youth and families” received educational services from the nonprofit last year, and over 6,900 educators participated in CES professional development programs.
The collaborative has faced challenges in recent years.
In January of last year, the organization shuttered its licensure program for aspiring teachers after 23 years, citing a decline in enrollment. CES leadership laid off 10 staff members and reduced hours for another 10 at that time. Half a year later, then executive director Todd Gazda resigned from the organization to become a school principal in Chester.
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Bonner has held superintendent roles in three other districts in Massachusetts and Connecticut since 2008, though her career has not been without its challenges.
In 2010, Bonner abruptly left her position as superintendent with New Bedford Public Schools before her contract was set to expire, reportedly amid conflict with then mayor Scott Lang, according to reporting in The Standard-Times. During a meeting before her resignation, Bonner suggested she was a token hire on the basis of her race.
In 2011, after Bonner was passed over for superintendent of Waterbury Public Schools in Connecticut, some in the Black community there alleged that race played a role in the school committee’s decision to choose another candidate, NBC Connecticut reported at the time.
In the summer of 2023, after a competitive selection process, Bonner made history as Northampton’s first Black superintendent, a milestone she’d achieved before in New Bedford.
It was that year that federal COVID-19 relief funds dried up, further straining already tight school budgets across western Massachusetts. In December 2023, Bonner proposed a budget with a $2.7 million deficit and floated staff layoffs, drawing intense pushback from Northampton’s staff union, the Northampton Association of School Employees, and advocates for more school funding.
Months later, in early 2024, Bonner faced further criticism for organizing a strategic-planning committee that included just one teacher. Critics said the committee wasn’t representative of the district, and argued that Bonner was too closely aligned with Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra and her allies.
Bonner’s approach to the district’s budgeting eventually resulted in the Northampton Association of School Employees voting no confidence in the superintendent, with 96% of participating voters supporting the move.
“Her budget presentations to city councilors were shameful displays of bureaucratic pandering to the mayor’s proposed school budget — which despite public outcry is still too low to maintain current services,” the union said in a press release at the time.
In a column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Bonner called the no confidence vote a “common device designed to divide the district and the community,” and defended her position on the school budget.
Aside from school funding battles, under Bonner’s tenure Northampton Public Schools have faced scrutiny for gaps in special education, and in August, following a complaint from a parent, a report from the state’s education department found that the district’s special-education staffing was insufficient.
In June, Sciarra announced that Bonner would be leaving Northampton Public Schools at the end of the 2025-26 academic year.
Later in the summer it was revealed during a School Committee meeting that Bonner had received a “needs improvement” evaluation from the district for the second year in a row.
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Bonner’s performance evaluations were cited in the letter to CES’s board from union staff, who argued that “in addition to employees, her employers have recognized deficiencies in Dr. Bonner’s leadership.”
The union argued in its Jan. 20 letter that it is Bonner’s tense union relations and her performance as superintendent that make her “unfit to lead CES.”
“Dr. Bonner’s management approach has led to difficulties in her previous positions, and there is no compelling evidence to suggest that her personnel management skills have improved,” the letter reads. “Rather, her interpersonal challenges seem to follow her from position to position.”
SEIU Local 509, which represents some CES employees, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
On Tuesday, 22 other CES employees, from entry-level staff to management, signed a separate letter to the board, a copy of which The Shoestring obtained. The letter made no mention of Bonner but instead called for the organization’s board to “pause the current decision, reopen the process, and intentionally solicit structured staff input, including consideration of whether declaring a failed search is in the best interest of the organization at this time.”
The letter said that the staffers had “significant concerns related to governance and process integrity.”
“There did not appear to be a clear or consistent method for reviewing, comparing, and discussing candidates’ responses, which limited the Board’s ability to engage in a systematic and well-documented deliberation,” the letter read.
The letter questioned why staff weren’t consulted in a more structured way as had happened in a previous executive director search. Their letter also said that some members of the board had only just begun their tenure, meaning the hiring process was their first engagement with board business. That “limited the opportunity to develop sufficient organizational context prior to participating in a decision with substantial long-term implications for the organization,” the letter said.
If the board chose not to pause the process, as the staffers suggested, the letter goes on to say that they recommend “safeguards that protect CES and support effective governance.”
“These safeguards should include an initial contract limited to one year and a clearly defined supervision and evaluation process, with transparent benchmarks and regular feedback,” they wrote. “These measures would align with best practices in executive oversight and help mitigate organizational risk.”
The CES Negotiations Subcommittee was set to meet Tuesday afternoon behind closed doors, when they had planned to conduct contract negotiations for the executive director position. However, on Tuesday afternoon, that meeting was pulled from the board’s agenda and rescheduled for Feb. 2.
The full CES board meets on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
Dan McGlynn is an investigative reporter covering social movements and institutional power in western Massachusetts. He can be reached at danmcglynn@protonmail.com. Follow him on Instagram @danmcglynn_ or on X @danmcglynn_.
