City officials this week hammered out a deal heading off state efforts to take over the schools or designate the district as “underperforming.”

An agreement announced Monday night set up an improvement plan for Boston Public Schools (BPS) and avoided a more intensive move, a takeover that state education officials sought after a critical report showed the system facing myriad problems, including a central office with “entrenched dysfunction.”

Had the district been declared “underperforming,” state education regulators could have installed a monitor, a move that the state education commissioner, Jeff Riley, proposed last week after city officials rebuffed a state takeover.

Mayor Michelle Wu, who took office in November and is due to get a new superintendent of schools this week, opposed a takeover. On Tuesday of this week, she appeared in Malden alongside Jeri Robinson, chair of the Boston School Committee and a Dorchester resident, at a meeting of the state’s education board to praise the agreement.

“Boston is ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work,” Wu told the board.

The agreement “landed where we hoped we would be,” she addded, and shows that local communities “know best.” The agreement also has an end date, another thing Wu wanted: June 23, 2025.

A Sunday night virtual meeting between city and state officials led to the signed agreement on Monday. The pact includes the installation by Aug. 15 of an independent auditor who will regularly analyze Boston Public Schools (BPS) data.

State officials will also funnel $10 million over three years to BPS, with the system agreeing to a 95 percent on-time rate for its buses, a new response system for safety issues, and an overhaul of its special education policies later this summer.

A state education department spokeswoman said in a statement Monday night that Boston school officials, under the agreement, will take “immediate action to address longstanding deficiencies in special education, English learner instruction, student safety and transportation,” among other issues facing the district. 

Wu said the independent data auditor position had been in “many drafts” of the agreement, but the city balked at entering into anything “less than a partnership.”

On Tuesday, Robinson called the report “long overdue,” and said that the current state of Boston schools is the result of a “hundred years” of problems and inequalities. “Thanks for holding us accountable,” she added. “We are looking forward to a partnership.”

Jessica Tang, the head of the Dorchester-based Boston Teachers Union, sounded an unhappy note about the entire affair, and echoed city officials in saying that educators, families, and students “know best what our students and our schools need.” She added, “Instead of applying unhelpful labels and top-down measures to districts in need of support, the state should be focused on collaboration, partnership, and a more democratically driven process to improve academic outcomes.”

The agreement between the city and state came as school officials weighed two finalists for superintendent. Brenda Cassellius, who was hired under Mayor Marty Walsh, said earlier this year she would step down at the end of the school year in a “mutual decision” with the Wu administration and the School Committee.

The two finalists — Somerville superintendent Mary Skipper, a Dorchester resident, and Tommy Welch, regional superintendent for schools in Charlestown, East Boston and the North End — met with student and community groups last week before taking part in separate interviews before the School Committee.

The committee was set to vote on a superintendent at its Wednesday (June 29) meeting.

Skipper, who worked in BPS for 17 years before heading to Somerville, served as the founding headmaster of TechBoston Academy, the former Dorchester High School. “BPS raised me,” Skipper told the School Committee, and TechBoston became her home.

The idea behind TechBoston was that students can do well in technology, science-based and engineering careers, she said. The school offered internships and gave all the students laptops. That transformed a lot of students’ lives, according to Skipper.

She explained that she left BPS for Somerville because she grew up in the Somerville and Arlington area, and knew she needed superintendent experience if she were to come back to Boston.

Calling herself a “builder,” Skipper said she would build trust through communicating with parents and students, and build a coalition with nonprofits and businesses to raise up the school district.

“I heard many parents talk about feeling that they can’t trust what happens and that even if it’s not the right answer, they just want the truth,” Skipper said.

She added: “We have to have the trust of our parents. It’s non-negotiable.”

Michael O’Neill, the School Committee’s vice chair and a member of the superintendent search panel, warmly greeted her and said her talk of BPS raising her “meant a lot to me.”

At the end, Skipper was allowed to turn the tables and ask what her first year and third year would look like if the committee selected her for the job.

O’Neill, referencing a massive upheaval in the education sector across the country, with teachers and school leaders retiring and choosing different careers, said that BPS needs to stabilize and the teachers union contract must be settled. “Year 1 is a lot of things that are needed right away,” he said. “Year 3 would focus on progress on the academic side and on BPS facilities.”

“We can be a cynical city, as you well know,” O’Neill said, but added that people want to see progress and then they’re willing to believe in what’s happening.

During his interviews, Welch called himself a “relational leader.” He is the father of two children in the BPS system, coming to Boston from Los Angeles in 2015 with Tommy Chang, a superintendent under Walsh and Cassellius’s predecessor.

He said he would be transparent about school system data. “Holding people accountable is to make data visible and easy to access,” he said.

Welch, who is bilingual and speaks fluent Spanish, added that he will “lift up and elevate as many leaders of color as I can into our organization”

Material from WBUR, a Dorchester Reporter partner, and State House News Service was used in this report.