Kamar Samuels should go — too bad Mamdani won’t hire anyone better to run NYC’s schools
We’re glad to hear that Mayor Zohran Mamdani has his minions looking to replace his tainted schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, but we have little hope the mayor will actually choose anyone good for the job.
The immediate cause for Samuels’ ouster would be The Post’s reporting on how he approved a $180,000 no-bid contract (to provide temporary foreign-language teachers) with a non-DOE-approved vendor when he was a Manhattan district superintendent.
Some efforts are in train to paint these violations as no big deal, with media reports suggesting the city Department of Education’s “cumbersome” and “dysfunctional” procurement process excuses Samuels’ breach of the rules.
Hmm: We don’t see how that could also excuse the subsequent coverup, as his No. 2 took the blame when the special commissioner of investigation came calling, and Samuels then rewarded that fall gal once he became chancellor.
The rules sure had some function: The vendor Samuels wrongly used wound up supplying a teacher who’d been been pushed out of city schools over charges of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old, which is why the SCI got called in.
City Councilman Phil Wong (D-Brooklyn) has urged Samuels to resign (with some colleagues agreeing), but the mayor is standing by him publicly . . . even as Mamdani’s people vet possible replacements.
Problem is, the hacks they’re looking at don’t look much cleaner: Meisha Ross Porter, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s last chancellor, is pushing to return, but City Hall chose Samuels over her because she’s tainted by financial scandals at a Bronx charity she ran.
Meanwhile, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (the principals union) has advised its members to stonewall SCI investigators probing school-procurement practices, which suggests Samuels wasn’t remotely the only one ignoring the contracting rules.
How many of the adults running the city’s public-school system are dirty?
Perhaps the folks in charge don’t much care, as long as you’re not rocking the boat: A system that spends $45 billion a year, over $42,000 per student, has a lot of room for siphoning off cash to one crony or another.
It’s often completely legal grift: The United Federation of Teachers isn’t breaking any laws, nor are the administrators who bloat their office payrolls and hire other pals as consultants.
Just by picking Samuels in the first place, Mamdani signaled he doesn’t want to rock the DOE boat; he just wants to avoid any headaches.
If the city’s parents want the mayor to start caring about their future, we guess they need to start making some TikTok videos to get his attention.
