NYC Chancellor Richard Carranza Builds a Wall To Keep Parents Away

 I guess building barriers against "the bad guys" is a trend in the 21st century. Here, I mean NYC parents and students. Chancellor Richard Carranza has created a new office for himself far from the maddening crowd on the 3rd floor of Tweed, the Education Department headquarters on 52 Chambers Street. I can just imagine all the fine furniture he possibly has bought too. He doesn't want any parent riff raff to get near him.

He just gets more and more ridiculous. His partner? NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio.

I previously posted on this blog the incident with Burt Sacks. See "Sex, Lies and Newspapers":

 In September 2001, I was the Editor of the PA Bulletin, the Parents' Association newsletter at Stuyvesant High School. Stuyvesant is about 1 city block away from the World Trade Center, so my daughter was front row center to the planes which flew into the Towers.

Unfortunately, we did not know that Stuyvesant was not declared residue-free before the students were told to return to the Stuyvesant Building on Chambers Street after they were moved to  Brooklyn Tech, where there just was no room. In order for the Principal of Stuyvesant, Stanley Teitel, to make parents and students comfortable being in the building, he asked Chancellor Harold Levy to take an office next to his on the first floor. Then he asked me to keep Chancellor Levy company. Mr. Levy and I had many conversations - actually he did most of the talking and I just listened - but one day I started talking about the theft of more than $13,000 from the Parents' Association at Booker T. Washington MS 54 (and here is part 2) where I was PTA President. Levy told me he would call his good friend Burt Sacks, and he did, right then and there. Burt told me to come to his office at 110 Livingston Street, 11th floor. So I made an appointment.

When I got to 110 Livingston St. in Brooklyn, getting to Burt's office was like visiting the President of the United States. On the 11th floor when you get off the elevator there was a guard and a huge American Flag. I told the guard my name, showed my ID, and waited until I was told I could go to Burt's office. And Burt was not even Chancellor! I just felt this kind of show of power was overdone.

This is what happened next:
"In or about November, 2002, I was at Tweed (NYC DOE headquarters) for a meeting of parent leaders, when we heard that everyone had to leave immediately in order for new Chancellor Joel Klein to have his cabinet meeting in the room we were in. I just happened to have the complete story of what Burt Sacks had said to me, as well as the details of what I uncovered at Booker T. Washington MS 54, in an envelope with "Chancellor Joel Klein" written on the outside. i assumed that Joel would want coffee, so while my friends left the room I walked s-l-o-w-l-y to the coffee machine, and was standing there when Joel burst into the room. He came over to me and introduced himself, and asked me how good was the coffee? I said it was delicious, and could I give him the envelope I had for him? He said "sure", poured himself some coffee, and sat down at the table with his cabinet, minus one. One chair was empty.

As I left the room (my friends were telling me I better hurry up), I looked back at Joel Klein, and saw that he had taken all the documents out of the envelope and was reading it. Everyone at the table was sitting, not saying anything. I got into the elevator and went to the first floor. I was talking with my friends when Burt Sacks comes running to the elevator and he said "Hello, Betsy! How are you? I'm very late!" I said, "yes, I think the meeting just started." Burt got into the elevator and went upstairs to the second floor.

The next day, newspapers posted how Burt Sacks "retired". Within two weeks Burt was Randi Weingarten's Assistant at the UFT.

Betsy Combier, betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials 

Richard Carranza

15G Walls For Posh Carranza Office
by Susan Edelman, NY POST, February 23, 2020

Schools chief’s ‘ivory tower’ high life

Mr. Chancellor, tear down this wall!

The city gave schools boss Richard Carranza a new enclosed office in a beautifully ornate wing — fit for a king — on an upper floor of the old Tweed Courthouse that serves as Department of Education headquarters.

The DOE said it cost about $15,000 for labor and materials to build “partitions” around Carranza’s spacious new office, saying he needed extra security.

The DOE refused to let a reporter see it.

Before erecting the barriers — which witnesses called a wall — the DOE did not seek the advice of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, saying it was unnecessary. The commission designated the historic building’s interior a protected city landmark in 1984.

Carranza’s private office takes up a big corner of the palatial, 2,060-square foot, third-floor mezzanine, The Post learned.

Councilman Joe Borelli (R-SI), an education committee member, rapped the fancy digs: “This is someone literally isolating himself in an ivory tower. Just looking at the space, it seems that it’s finally equal to the grand opinion that Chancellor Carranza has about himself.”

But City Hall cited concern over Carranza’s safety, saying the NYPD last September assigned its Threat Assessment and Protection Unit to conduct a security assessment on Carranza for the DOE. The NYPD was concerned that the chancellor’s former office was located on the ground floor, directly inside the front door — where all visitors go through metal detectors — and visible through windows in the lobby, officials said. “In terms of threat mitigation, the location offered minimal ability to maintain access control for the chief executive of the DOE,” an NYPD spokesperson told The Post by e-mail Saturday.

Before Carranza, chancellors — such as Dennis Walcott (inset below) sat in small Room 152 on the first floor, which had an adjacent enclosed conference room, or in the open-space third-floor “bullpen,” side-by-side with staffers.

Carranza moved his office several levels up this month, with aides saying the embattled educator has received “threats.”

The chancellor and his top aides, who sit nearby, displaced staffers formerly assigned to the aborted Renewal program to fix failing schools.

The mezzanine features a vaulted ceiling, towering cream-and-red brick arches, sculptured columns, marble tile floors and intricate chandeliers, records and a photo provided by John G. Waite Associates, architects on the renovation, show.

A landmark expert frowned at the lax oversight. “Given the beauty of the room and importance of the building, it would have been appropriate to ask the LPC for guidance,” said Peg Breen, head of the nonprofit New York Landmarks Conservancy.

A landmark designation means any renovation requires an application to ensure work does not alter or damage historic features.

In 2002, Mayor Mike Bloomberg moved Chancellor Joel Klein and other educrats into the building at 52 Chambers St., next door to City Hall.

“The NYPD had security concerns about [Carranza’s] previous office, and this space allows for additional security measures,” said spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.

Richard Carranza builds himself big new office in DOE headquarters
by Susan Edelman and Selim Algar, NY POST, February 15, 2020

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has built himself a palatial new office at the Department of Education’s downtown headquarters, The Post has learned.

Carranza’s new private digs — which include a newly constructed wall — are tucked into the elegant third-floor mezzanine of the historic Tweed Courthouse, high above the old chancellor’s office in Room 152 and the “bullpen” where former chancellors sat at modest work desks amid their staffers.

The wall-construction and office shift — completed in the last two weeks — came as Carranza has beefed up his personal security detail from one bodyguard to two after receiving “threats,” officials confirmed.

“The chancellor needs an office to do work and hold meetings, and it has to be secure,” said his spokeswoman Miranda Barbot. “This space allows for additional security measures and for his staff to be in one place.”

DOE officials said Carranza’s office furniture “was recycled at no additional cost,” but did not say how much the wall construction and other remodeling cost taxpayers.

It’s the first time since the DOE moved into the old Tweed Courthouse in 2002 that a chancellor’s office was rebuilt.

About 50 DOE employees stationed at Tweed had to move their desks to accommodate the chancellor’s new digs, space for his top staff and a conference room, insiders said.

Eric Nadelstern, a deputy chancellor under former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, blasted Carranza’s relocation.

“First, it’s imperious,” he said. “It’s symptomatic of somebody struck by his own self importance. Second, there’s no surplus of space at Tweed.  For the chancellor to carve out that much space, it’s at the expense of other people working there. Third, it’s awfully late in the de Blasio administration for mayoral appointees to have designs on previously shared space.”

Nadelstern also questioned the wall-construction cost. “The reality in NYC is, any money spent outside schools is at the expense of kids and teachers in the classroom.”

A special-needs DOE teacher in Harlem was angered by what she called the chancellor’s extravagance.

“In my school, the classroom libraries are over 20 years old, floors in many classrooms are worn down to the concrete, and our one social worker has a caseload of over 100 students. Once again Chancellor Carranza has demonstrated how not to put the needs of our students above his own, narcissistic, delusional and selfish wants.”

The DOE said the uprooted staffers were moved to empty space on the first and fourth floors and the old chancellor’s office is now available for private meeting space for anyone in the building.

 Former Chancellor Carmen Fariña, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first appointee, initially sat in the unbarred bullpen on the third-floor below the mezzanine, as did prior Bloomberg chancellors Joel Klein and Dennis Walcott. She eventually took over Room 152, a small ground-floor office that had been used by the principal of a school in the building.

Tweed -NYC Department of Education headquarters

 While Carranza succeeds a prior Hispanic chancellor and a black chancellor, he claims he’s been the butt of racist taunts on social media.  
At a Jan. 20 press conference with Mayor de Blasio, Carranza was asked why he walked out of a districtwide Queens meeting where two parents demanded answers about their kids, one a girl viciously beaten by another student in a caught-on-tape cafeteria fight, the other sexually groped in her classroom.

“Just look at the abject racist things that are said about me. Go back where I came from. Taco eating Carranza. Fire Carranza ayayay with exclamation points in Spanish. Absolutely. They’re racist,” he said.

He also cited “agitators” in the audience who started shouting at him. Protesters who demand Carranza’s firing for various reasons, including alleged bias against Asian Americans, have shown up at his appearances and raised a ruckus.

Carranza, who has planned to conduct a town hall meeting in every school district, has become so nervous about the hostility that he is now flanked by a bodyguard at all times — even on trips to restrooms in the field, an insider told The Post.

The DOE would not give any details on threats against Carranza, saying that doing so would pose a “security risk.”

 “We take any threats seriously and continue to work closely with the NYPD, making adjustments necessary to ensure the Chancellor’s safety,” said DOE spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.