The process to hire a new superintendent for Cambridge Public Schools was a mess from start to finish. Arjun will work to ensure that our district never repeats this level of fiasco — because it’s no answer to say the ends justify the means.

Check out School Committee candidate Jess Goetz’s timeline of the hiring process up until mid August for starters: The School Committee blew one deadline after another and posted a generic job description before beginning any community engagement process. (That community engagement consisted of a handful of belatedly announced, sparsely attended forums at the end of the school year; the only forum for teachers and educators was held during their work hours). It only got worse from there.

After having rejected bids from experienced executive search firms, the School Committee hired a firm with no executive search experience for just under the amount that would have triggered a public bidding process. Of the three finalists announced for the job, only one had classroom experience and none had been a permanent superintendent. Late in the hiring process, it became public that there were serious questions about the background and judgment of one finalist.

Ultimately, the result was exactly the one many observers had said that all the delays, oversights, and mistakes were intended to lead to: David Murphy, the man who became interim superintendent without any external search process, became permanent superintendent without a serious competitive search. Not unlike what happened with his predecessor, who lasted less than three years in the job all told.

Following the vote to hire Mr. Murphy, the public — and some members of the School Committee — learned that the Chair and Vice-Chair of the School Committee had secretly agreed to pay an additional $40,000 to the search firm (with no experience as a search firm) that had initially been hired for just under the $10,000 that would trigger a public bidding process.

Mr. Murphy may turn out to be a perfectly adequate superintendent. But this process was unacceptable. Cambridge voters, Cambridge families, and Cambridge educators deserve an investigation into how it happened this way.