Bobbie J. D’Alessandro sat in her snappy red suit and high heels awaiting the verdict on her time at the helm of Cambridge’s public schools.

Though they came to decide the fate of their superintendent, the school committee hadn’t dressed for the occasion. They came to last Thursday’s meeting in their usual—quilted poncho tops, sneakers, nothing louder than earth tones.

D’Alessandro is distinctly not from Cambridge.

The lifetime education administrator from Florida used to run the Fort Myers schools. When she arrived in Cambridge five years ago, she was deposited in a district splintered by political factions, where the school committee shares the stakes with groups of diehard parents.

She imported many of her Florida administrators and brought her Florida approach. She and her “leadership team” set about writing goals for the district, drafting standards and initiating long processes for educational reform.

But last week she faced the pent-up frustrations of the school committee—confronting nearly unanimous accusations that her processes took too long, accomplished too little and left too many people out.

She acknowledged that, if the committee kept her on, she would change her ways to be more in line with the Cambridge style of involving parents at every step of the way.

“I have to be very strong, very clear and maybe a different kind of Bobbie D’Alessandro,” she told the committee. “I have learned and experienced over the past year that clarity is very important and that you have to be the superintendent that stands for something.”

But when the verdict came back, it came as a 6-1 vote not to renew her contract and to send the transplant on her way again after her term expires in September.

D’Alessandro and her leadership team scurried away from the meeting.

She says the outcome took her by surprise.

“I really thought they might extend me for a year,” she says. “Of course I’m hurt by it but they are the boss of this organization and they had a decision to make.”

‘Heavy Stuff’

Last week’s decisive action settled long-standing tensions between the school committee and the superintendent.

Even though he was elected only a year ago, first-time committee member Alan C. Price says he already ran out of patience for D’Alessandro’s delays and miscommunications.