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Showing posts with label New York City Department of Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York City Department of Education. Show all posts

Sunday, June 14, 2026

NYC Councilman Says NYC Department of Education Chancellor Kamar Samuels Must Resign or Be Fired For Approving No-Bid Contracts

 

The first public official has called for Samuels to resign.
Stephen Yang for NY Post

For many years, parent activists have promoted the idea that the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education ("DOE") should not be appointed by the Mayor, but elected in a General election. Too much money is at stake.

No one in City government has started doing anything about this. Why? Because the culture of "take what isn't yours if its' public money" is too entrenched in the City government. Chancellor Kamar Samuels makes $363,000.00 plus car, driver, and other benefits each year he is in office. Our Mayor makes $258.750 per year.

The NYC Department of Education proposed Fiscal 2027 expense budget is $38.04 billion. This represents roughly 29.4% of the city’s total preliminary budget, with $12.9 billion specifically dedicated to contracts for pupil transportation, special education, and charter schools.

See NYC Department of Education Budget.

This is horrifying.

Why? Because never have the students' standards fallen to such lows. NYC children are not learning. Yet salaries are rising. And there is no accountability.

In my work as a workplace investigator and legal representative, I have fought for employees in 3020-a hearings, arbitration, State and Federal Courts, and PERB, and I see personal dislikes and political animosity the basis for charging someone who is  completely innocent. More than 90% of discontinuances and terminations occur due to religious/gender/race discrimination or simple dislike without any valid wrongdoing.

The post below is about the credentials and past and present actions of the Chancellor of the New York City DOE, Kamar Samuels. He should be independently investigated and, if found guilty of selling his position for person gain, ousted.

Just sayin'

Betsy Combier, Editor

NYC Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels a ‘dead man walking’ after being grilled over no-bid contracts

By
David Spector and
Rich Calder, 
Published June 13, 2026,

Sharks in City Hall are circling around NYC Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, insiders told The Post this week, as the first elected official has publicly called for his head.

Samuels had a disastrous week after he was grilled at a City Council budget hearing Monday over The Post’s bombshell exclusive that he inked a $180,000 no-bid contract with a non-Department of Education-approved vendor Sean Kreyling in 2023, while he was superintendent of the Upper West Side’s District 3.

He also split payments between Kreyling’s two companies so they wouldn’t exceed a $25,000 threshold that would have triggered city financial oversight, emails obtained by The Post show.

“Chancellor Kamar Samuels has lost the confidence of public school parents, educators, and school administrators. He should step down,” New York City Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens) told The Post.

A City Hall insider told The Post the DOE is already expecting Samuels to get the axe, and the agency is bracing itself for the loss of its fourth chancellor in five years.

“He’s a dead man walking,” the source said.

“People don’t really like him anyway — people believe he is in way over his head,” a well-placed DOE source told The Post.

Before DOE General Counsel Liz Vladeck shut down further questions, Samuels testified Monday that he regrets “the lapses in policy and procedures that took place while I was the superintendent, and the actions in question were all meant to [be] in the pursuit of educational opportunity.”


Samuels’ week only got worse after Kreyling was suddenly called in to testify at a hearing Wednesday, and pointed the finger squarely at Samuels and also accused the SCI — the independent DOE investigative body — of engaging in a rigged investigation to cover for him.

“It had a narrative that it wanted to carry out from start to finish, protecting certain individuals, and ultimately it allowed me and my organization to be the scapegoats for the very poor decisions of Kamar Samuels,” he testified at the hearing.

The June 2025 SCI report pinned the blame on Kreyling and Samuels’ former Deputy Superintendent, Mariela Graham — who signed a near-identical contract with Kreyling in 2024 — and made no mention of Samuels’ role in the scheme.

City Councilman Frank Morano (R–Staten Island) demanded accountability after Kreyling’s testimony.

“What troubles me isn’t just the allegation itself. It’s the possibility that there may be one set of rules for rank-and-file employees and another set of rules for senior leadership,” Morano said.

The DOE and Samuels did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.

See also:

Kamar Samuels swimming waist-deep in NYC schools’ corrupt waste

NYPost , June 11, 2026

New York City Schools Chancellor Being Investigated Over No-Bid Contract
June 9, 2026, New York Times

Exclusive | NYC schools chancellor signed 'illegal' $180K contract and split payments to cover it up
NY POST, May 30, 2026
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Saturday, August 31, 2024

Eric Goldstein, Former NYC Department of Education Employee in Charge of School Food, Found Guilty of Taking Bribes and Serving Kids Tainted Food


Eric Goldstein, the former head of the Department of Education’s Office of School Support Services, was convicted of taking bribes to ignore health violations from the supplier of chicken tenders to the city’s schools.AP

From Betsy Combier, Editor:  

When you work for the NYC Department of Education and know that other administrators are stealing from the $37 Billion budget pot without consequences, you may want a little for yourself. If they can, so can I, right?

No, Mr. Goldstein, this scam does not include you. You were caught this time, and when you were running the school bus scam in 2018.

Fraudulent money schemes are too easy to set up at the NYC DOE. We, the public, need a Special Counsel like James Gill (Gill Commission) and Edward Stancik (SCI when it started and was a real investigative agency) to unravel all of this.

See these posts as well:

Former New York City Department of Education CEO of School Support Services and Three Executives of SOMMA Food Group Convicted of Extortion Conspiracy and Bribery

Ex-DOE exec convicted of taking bribes, turning blind eye to tainted chicken tenders served to NYC public school kids





Eric Goldstein  [photo: Kristy Leibowitz]

...he was re-hired. Why?

See also:

Winning 3020-a, and The New York City Department of Education "Investigators" - or Not

Betsy Combier

Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials 

Disgraced NYC public schools exec who turned blind eye to tainted food begs judge for mercy

Finally, he’s caring about children.

The disgraced New York public schools executive convicted of taking bribes and serving tainted food to city kids says his own family is “barely hanging on” — as federal prosecutors seek to lock him up for six years.

“I am pleading for mercy,” Eric Goldstein, a former official at the DOE, wrote in an Aug. 23 letter, in which he tried to get sympathy by describing how hard his two sons and ex-wife had been suffering because of his crimes.

“Not especially for me, but for [his family] because without my financial, emotional and physical support I fear that they will be cast adrift and drown.”

Goldstein’s appeal for the heartstrings comes after he and three defendants — Michael Turley, Brian Twomey, and Blaine Iler — were found guilty by a Brooklyn federal jury in 2023 of extortion and bribery charges for the kickback scheme involving Texas-based meat supplier Somma Foods.

Goldstein, 56, pushed Somma Foods’ chicken products into city schools despite recurring health issues, in return for kickbacks that included thousands in cash and a share in the company.

He even got money to pay his divorce attorney, prosecutors have said.

Jurors were shown disturbing photos of some of Somma’s offerings, including chicken drumsticks oozing a thick-red liquid, and other chicken products that contained plastic, bones or metal in them.

Goldstein turned a blind eye to tainted chicken served to schoolchildren in exchange for bribes from three co-defendants.DOJ

Goldstein received bribes from Somma employees to keep their food inside city schools.DOJ

In the letter, Goldstein bemoaned about how his family — two sons and a former spouse — face “actual life or death” from the fallout of his actions, and that it any jail sentence would be a “crushing punishment” to his family.

“I truly cannot imagine a more searing pain than knowing that your actions and decisions might cause the eviction, dissolution, and devastation of your own family,” Goldstein, who acknowledge he wears a “unfading scarlet letter of felon and failure,” said.

Goldstein fast-tracked getting Somma foods into nearly 2,000 schools starting in 2015. But the company had issues keeping up with the demand after millions of dollars worth of food orders.

Then from Sept. 2016 through March 2017, schools reported bleeding from half-inch pieces of “wire-like metal” and blue plastic found in poultry — and a food service manager needed to receive the Heimlich maneuver after choking on a bone in a chicken tender.

It took until April 2017 for the DOE to remove all Somma products from schools after repeated complaints by students and staffers, prosecutors said at trial.

His attorneys are asking the judge to keep Goldstein out of jail because of his “fundamentally good character,” citing his 15-year stint at the Department of Education and more than two dozen letters sent by family and friends.

Then from Sept. 2016 through March 2017, schools reported bleeding from half-inch pieces of “wire-like metal” and blue plastic found in poultry — and a food service manager needed to receive the Heimlich maneuver after choking on a bone in a chicken tender.

It took until April 2017 for the DOE to remove all Somma products from schools after repeated complaints by students and staffers, prosecutors said at trial.

His attorneys are asking the judge to keep Goldstein out of jail because of his “fundamentally good character,” citing his 15-year stint at the Department of Education and more than two dozen letters sent by family and friends.

Eric Goldstein (right) and co-defendants including Blaine Iler (left) will be sentenced on September 9.DOJ

“Eric has been crushed by the realization that all he will be remembered for is his involvement in this case. That this experience might culminate in his incarceration and the certain devastation of his family that would follow is often too much for Eric to bear,” his attorneys said in their sentencing submission letter.

But prosecutors, who are seeking to lock up Goldstein for 63 to 78 months, laughed at his attorneys trying to downplay his role in the chicken scandal.

“The notion that Goldstein, who was the Chief Executive Officer of School Support Services, responsible for SchoolFood, athletics and busing, was not a high-level decisionmaker is, candidly, disingenuous, and the Court should summarily reject,” prosecutors said in their own filing.

Prosecutors added that Goldstein’s greed also harms potential vendors doing business with the DOE because they will “wonder whether they too will need to make payments to DOE officials” to get their products approved.

Each of the other co-defendants face up to a little more than five years in prison, according to the feds.

They will all be sentenced September 9 in Brooklyn Federal Court.

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Sunday, August 27, 2023

The NYC Department of Education Ignores Ethical Rules, Gives High-Paying Jobs to Danika and Shawn Rux

Danika and Shawn Rux

Have you ever heard anyone at the New York City Department of Education tell someone "Do as I say not as I do"?

Perhaps your parent told you that after they did something that they told you not to do.

The NYC DOE has structured its rules of compliance with the laws of New York State so that there is one set of rules for Superintendents, Deputy Chancellors, executive directors, legal, and relatives and/or friends of any of these "officials", and another set for everyone else.

Anyone who is recommended by a person at the Superintendent level or above, or favored "friends with benefits" below the Superintendent level, does not get the mandated vetting by Human Resources (Capital Management, HR, whatever you want to call this office). See the case of David Hay. 

This hiring process is always kept secret from the public.

At no time do any of the privileged prospective employees submit their name or issue to the Conflict of Interest Board ("COIB"). COIB ethics rules do not apply to them:

"The main purpose of ethics laws lies not in punishing wrongdoing, but in preventing it, not in catching people, but in teaching them.

The Conflicts of Interest Board is the independent New York City agency tasked with administering, enforcing and interpreting Chapter 68 of the New York City Charter, the City's Conflicts of Interest Law, and Section 12-110 of the Administrative Code, the City's Annual Disclosure Law. We hope you'll enjoy learning more about this agency, and government ethics in general, by exploring the tabs on the left and the other offerings on our site.

Through a combination of engaging training, confidential advice, and vigorous enforcement, the Board seeks to prevent ethics questions from becoming ethics problems for public servants. Ultimately, however, integrity in City government rests upon all of us, public servant and private citizen alike. Only when each of us plays his or her part will the public trust inherent in public service be ensured."

I am familiar with this disregard for rules of ethics. In 2013 a principal was served 3020-a charges, and her CSA Attorney was Charity Guerra. During the hearings, Ms. Guerra suddenly quit, in order to take the job of Deputy General Counsel of the NYC Department of Education. I was shown the email sent from Ms. Guerra to this charged principal. In this email, Charity Guerra informed her that she realized her conflict of interest, yet wished her former client the best of luck. No COIB Complaint was filed and no fine was given.

In 2019, however, Ms. Guerra tried to go around COIB, but COIB filed an enforcement action against her, COIB Case No. 2016-932, resulting in a penalty fine of $3,500.

"I acknowledge that, by having the Executive Deputy Counsel for Risk Management and Litigation, who was my subordinate, perform a personal task for me related to the Lawsuit, I used my City position to obtain a private advantage in violation of City Charter§ 2604(b)(3), which states:

No public servant shall use or attempt to use his or her position as a public servant to obtain any financial gain, contract, license, privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect, for the public servant or any person or firm associated with the public servant."

We can all see that the rules apply to the NYC DOE VIPs only if or when they get caught.

Thanks to reporter Susan Edelman, Danika and Shawn Rux  "got caught". See article in the NY POST below.


NYC DOE hires husband of deputy chancellor in secret promotion deal

By Susan Edelman, NY POST, 

The husband of schools Chancellor David Banks’ newly appointed $265,000-a-year deputy chancellor of leadership scored a high-paying job in the city Department of Education as part of a secret deal to ensure his wife’s promotion, insiders told The Post.

Shawn Rux will be the executive director of the DOE's Office of School Design and Charter Partnerships.

Shawn Rux, the husband of Danika Rux, landed a gig as executive director of the DOE’s Office of School Design and Charter Partnerships starting on September 5, replacing the retiring Daniella Phillips, whose salary was $195,000 last year, sources said.

“It’s the ‘friends and family’ program,” a DOE staffer said sarcastically.

Danika Rux was a DOE superintendent when her husband founded an educational consulting firm, Ruxway Inc., in March 2020. The firm has since collected $253,450 in DOE payments, records show.

Under city Conflicts of Interest Board rules, any public servant whose spouse owns a company that does business with the city must obtain an order granting permission to retain a financial interest in it.

“The board has not issued an order to Danica Rux,” said Carolyn Lisa Miller, the COIB’s executive director.

Miller said she cannot comment on any alleged misconduct by a city employee “until such time as the board makes a final finding of a violation of the conflicts of interest law.”

Chancellor Banks appointed Danika Rux — whom he previously named a “chief of school support” making $222,972 — his deputy chancellor of leadership on Aug. 10. She replaced Desmond Blackburn, a Florida import who quit after a year. The job involves supervising the DOE’s 45 superintendents.

Before her latest promotion, officials reportedly set a condition: “The deal was: for her to be deputy chancellor, (Shawn Rux) had to give up his business,” said a source close to the arrangement.

In exchange, Shawn Rux was promised a job in the DOE, the source claimed. “It’s the foul stench of nepotism.” 

The office that Shawn Rux will lead oversees the closing or merging of schools, a rare occurrence in recent years. It also helps schools co-located with charters.

“This is an extremely low-profile gig,” a staffer said.

DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said Friday, “We are still in the process of hiring for this role.”

But insiders said Shawn Rux met with the office staff that morning and introduced himself as their new boss. Styer had no response.

Shawn Rux, the principal of MS 53 in Far Rockaway from 2011 to 2016, was featured in news stories for creating “Rux Bux,” vouchers for school supplies or lunches that students earned for good behavior. He also raffled tickets for prizes, like an Xbox, to get kids to come to school.

He was promoted to deputy superintendent in 2017 and left the DOE in 2021 to run for a City Council seat, unsuccessfully.

He then founded Ruxway Inc. The company offered keynote speaking, leadership coaching, “school turnaround” guidance, and “culture/climate support.” 

It’s not the only case in which the school’s chancellor has favored friends, insiders said.

Banks named Tracey Collins — a DOE administrator and Mayor Adams’ longtime girlfriend – as a “senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership,” then Blackburn. She started that job in July 2022 with a 23% raise to $221,597.

Banks and Danika Rux would not answer questions. Shawn Rux did not return messages seeking comment.

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Sunday, November 20, 2022

Former MS80 Principal's Wife Collects Mega Cash Rent From Dominican Teachers


Sterling Báez, a DOE elementary school teacher, helps run the rental.
Facebook

I'm sure that we have all heard the saying "Where there is smoke, there's fire". Well, it seems that the actions of MS80 Principal fit that slogan. See here:

Bronx Principal Emmanuel Polanco Accused of Shake Down of Teachers Brought To NYC From the Dominican Republic posted on this blog November 12, 2022


Former MS 80 Principal Emmanuel Polanco was a favored son. He has been able to do whatever he could dream up to make money without a peep from the NYC DOE. He was removed from his position on November 2, 2022. Yesterday in the NY POST we found out that his wife Sterling Baez (pictured above) helped him collect rent from teachers recruited from the Dominican Republic. See the article below.

Does anyone believe that the VIPs at the New York City Department of Education did not know this was going on? Of course not. 

The NYC DOE turns their collective backs on administrators who do something wrong until someone exposes what is going on.

Thanks, New York Post!

Betsy Combier, Editor


One of the teachers, Rosa Minier, said she was required to rent a room in the co-op.J.C. Rice

NYC principal’s wife rakes in cash from Dominican teachers paying steep rent
By Georgia Worrell and Susan Edelman, NY POST, November 19, 2022

The wife of a Bronx principal collects rent money from teachers recruited from the Dominican Republic and forced to share a co-op apparently owned by the principal’s mother.

The city Department of Education announced with great fanfare in September that it had hired 25 bilingual Dominican teachers to work with Spanish-speaking students. But the program is now embroiled in accusations that the foreigners have been controlled and intimidated by a group of DOE administrators profiting as their landlord.

In addition to a Bronx duplex where 11 Dominican teachers were housed by ADASA, the Association of Dominican-American Supervisors and Administrators, three others were put into a three-bedroom co-op — each charged $1,350 to $1,400 a month, plus security deposits, teachers said.

Emmanuel Polanco, 39, the first vice president of ADASA and MS 80 principal — removed this month pending an investigation into the program — runs the rental with his wife, Sterling Báez, 32, a DOE elementary teacher in the Bronx.

The couple hold keys to the teachers’ rooms and mailbox, the teachers said. They also set rules: “We cannot receive visitors, Ms. Polanco told us.”

Desperate attempts by the teachers to save money were rejected: “We wanted to move into the same bedroom [and split the rent], but they said ‘No you cannot. You have to live individually.’”

The three-bedroom apartment in a 67-unit co-op building at 2866 Marion Ave. was purchased for $155,000 in 2006 by Juana Polanco-Abreu, 61, who is listed in records as the principal’s mother.

Polanco-Abreu received a $10,000 loan from the city’s Housing, Preservation and Development department under a program to help low- and middle-income people buy their first homes, agency officials said in response to an inquiry.

One of the Dominican teachers in the Marion Avenue co-op, Rosa Minier, said she was required to rent a room there after being told that her husband and three children, ages 12, 7 and 5, could not join her in New York for at least a year.

“I cry every night,” she said of missing her kids.

But Minier enjoys teaching at the International School for Liberal Arts: “I love my job.”

The three women share a kitchen, bathroom and living room — which last week had just an old, dismantled fish tank in it.

“I pay my rent to Polanco’s wife,” one said, showing a screenshot of a $1,012 payment on a digital banking app to “Esterlin Adasa” with a phone number that records show belongs to Báez.

Báez, who posts sexy photos of herself on Facebook, is a teacher at PS 595 The Colibrí Community School in the Bronx.

Báez did not reply to an email asking about her role. The city Department of Education and Polanco did not respond to requests for comment.

On Friday, District 10 Superintendent Maribel Torres-Hulla sent a letter to the MS 80 community announcing that Kenyatta Williams, an assistant principal, will take over as Acting Principal. She did not mention Polanco, who was “reassigned” on Nov. 2.

The Dominican teacher program is now under investigation by city and federal authorities.

Since The Post and CBS first reported complaints of exploitation and intimidation of the Dominican teachers last week, more have emerged.

“I have continued to receive allegations even after the investigation was initiated,” Bronx state Sen. Luis Sepúlveda said Friday. He would not discuss the allegations, saying he referred them to the DOE.

ADASA put 11 teachers in a cramped two-family house on Baychester Avenue in the Bronx, charging 10 of them $1,450 a month each, and one $1,300 a month, The Post has reported. The total $15,800 in collected revenue would net a $8,900 profit over the $6,900 ADASA pays to lease the duplex

 The teachers were warned, several said, that they could lose their NYC jobs and J-1 visas if they objected to the terms.

“You can join the other teachers, or you can voluntarily resign,” Ramon Alexander Suriel said he was told in an Oct. 14 “ultimatum meeting” at MS 80 with Polanco and an MS 80 staffer.

Suriel, 50, who brought his wife and two kids, ages 2 and 4, to share the New York experience, said he was told to send his family back without him.

He quit, and returned to the DR — after incurring some $3,500 in expenses due to ADASA botching a set of airline tickets to NYC, forcing him to pay again for a second flight and overnight stays. 

“I want my money back,” he fumed, adding that ADASA has failed to refund his lost money. “No one is accountable for it.”

The NYC teachers’ union said it will look into legal aid for Suriel and other Dominican teachers, said UFT spokeswoman Alison Gendar.

Last week, the other Dominican teachers renting rooms received a letter in defense of Polanco and ADASA from Marianne Mason, executive director of the Cordell Hull Foundation for International Education, a New York-based group that sponsors the visas.

She blamed the teachers’ complaints on “culture shock” and “quite a few points of misunderstanding.”

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