 |
| Tracey Collins landed a significant promotion and raise after Mayor Eric Adams took office. Now she's retiring amid swirling investigations. (Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic) |
From Betsy Combier:
Advocates who work in New York City trying to assist parents/grandparents/guardians with their children who need services such as occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech, paraprofessionals, and other service providers know what a disaster the New York City Department of Education is in terms of providing those services.
Department chiefs repeat their slogans, "There is no money" or "We are trying to find a provider," while at the same time requiring so much paperwork for providers who receive half or a third of their hourly rate that it is almost not worth the effort to provide these services.
Of course, some employees donate their time, and I know many of these gold stars. They help children despite the hardships. Thank you to all!
This post is not really about these providers. It is about the ugly political favors that Mayor Adams has given out while in office. I use the word ugly because all the stronger words I would say about this are not my style. You can get my drift. I am so angry about the corruption in my City.
On November 1, 2024, Mayor Adams' girlfriend Tracy Collins "retired" from her no-show job at the department, where she was paid $279,684. The Special Commissioner of Investigation is looking into her cushy position at the Department, which her boyfriend, Eric Adams, has had control over since he took office in 2021. Adams is also being investigated, as are most of his Department chiefs.
Former NYC DOE employee Diane Pagen wrote this on Medium (Oct. 2, 2024):
"Tracey Collins, another of Eric Adams’s friends and family hires, took big salary and big gifts while her unvaccinated coworkers got fired.
by Diane Pagen
Imagine for a moment what it is like to be a tenured, professional educator waking up everyday in September 2024, an educator who was pushed out of the NYC Schools in fall of 2021, just because I declined to take the Covid shot. You know, the shot that Dr. Jay Varma has now admitted I never needed. I’ve awakened everyday to the parade of characters in NYC Schools and beyond whose alleged graft, greed, and selfishness makes my “vaccine noncompliance” finally seem like the non-event it always should have been.
While I and thousands of other workers were harassed and maligned and our careers taken from us for not taking a Covid vaccine, and the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education (DOE) was not allowing us to go to work (and still isn’t), DOE employee Tracey Collins was allegedly being paid a lot more than most of us for a job she did not go to much, and was accepting gifts of great value like super luxury travel and nights in the best hotel in Istanbul. Whether she took these gifts directly from her partner the Mayor or from people seeking favors from the City doesn’t matter, both are an ethical violation.
According to the NY Post, the gifts Collins accepted amount to $45,000 or more. To put her alleged conduct in perspective, every year I was at the DOE, we got an email in December from the Mayor reminding us that the City code of ethics prohibited me from accepting any gift exceeding the cost of a cup of coffee.
It does seem too that Collins either took a lot of time off from work to be able to do that travel, or alternatively, was allowed to work fully remotely during a time when the DOE Chancellor was telling unvaccinated workers that we could not work remotely because it would place a “burden” on the schools.
There just seems to be a pervasive crisis of ethics and conduct going on that cannot be explained away by the one bad apple theory in NYC. The whole bowl seems to be rotting. Recently, a Staten Island principal allegedly thought it was fine to make hiring decisions based on skin color, and openly discriminate against white males, regardless of the individual’s qualifications. That principal, instead of being terminated, is being horizontally moved. She will lose no salary despite her racism. She is also getting her opportunity for due process that was not given to her coworkers who only declined a Covid shot. Why is that.
Last year we heard about Amanda Lurie, another high level DOE hire who also did not like showing up for work and when she did, she spent City time selling stuff on Poshmark. She got due process too. Her punishment? She was moved to a better paying DOE job.
Does anyone see a pattern here?
The City seems to have been overrun with a small army of people of questionable ethics, who call everyone else racists but they themselves practice it; or who are system gamers; or who accept gifts that violate City ethics and compromise their ethics. And it appears that one effect of the Covid years is that while everyone was being told to spend time shaming unvaccinated educators like me, who actually came to work gladly for the 2020–21 school year to make sure kids had help in person, and who worked remote on our own personal phones and computers when schools shut down, somehow the mission of the agency — educating and enriching the lives and well-being of children — was forgotten. While De Blasio and then Adams were doing mass firings of unionized unvaccinated workers who had never committed misconduct, the agencies filled up with people who don’t want to work, don’t see anything wrong with nepotism, take gifts of great value, and use power to set up profitable deals for themselves and friends.
At the DOE in particular, this situation did not start with David Banks. Richard Carranza should have been investigated for shamelessly hiring his girlfriend (while married) and creating a half dozen $200K jobs for friends, but he never planned on sticking around, because for him it was clearly never about the kids. But under Banks it has continued, quite intensely. And terminating very experienced, tenured, moral workers under the pretext of “public health” because we did not wish to take a Covid shot is part of how City administrators did it. It was puzzling to me when Mayor Adams became Mayor that all the various friends and family hires were for the most part permitted; did anybody in power actually think that nepotism would improve City agencies? Banks announced that he is retiring in December: people should know that actually that the agency culture discourages staff leaving mid year as it (used to) recognize that changing staff on children mid school year was not good for the kids. I guess Banks forgot that rule, or, like many DOE rules, these only apply to the employees on the bottom, which I suspect is part of how DOE has derailed so quickly in just a few years. The proof is in the children — chronic absences are up, anxiety and bullying reports are up, academic excellence overall is down. Our children need better and deserve better.
Across the street from the DOE on Chambers Street, we have the NYC Department of Health, where the Health Commissioner has now declared he is resigning “for personal reasons.” Is this what our City has come to, a bunch of leaders who hate us too much to answer our questions and who duck out to save themselves? By the way, does anyone else think it is possible that the current or former Health Commissioners probably knew or should have known what Dr. Varma was up to while unvaccinated workers were being destroyed by the “rules”? Does anyone else want to hear what they think or what they knew? I do.
To corrupt any agency is a two step process. You need to a) fill it with people who are corrupt, or who will be silent in the face of corruption and b) identify all people who do not stay silent, and who won’t just do whatever their told and find a way to get rid of them.
And that, my friends, is what the vaccine mandate was for."
I agree.
Betsy Combier
By Alex Zimmerman, Chalkbeat, November 8, 2024
Tracey Collins, Mayor Eric Adams’ romantic partner, has quietly retired from a senior position at the Education Department amid allegations that she didn’t show up to work and failed to disclose luxury travel benefits.
Collins — who received a significant promotion and a roughly $50,000 raise after Adams took office in 2022 — wrapped up her last day of work on Nov. 1, a department spokesperson confirmed.
Her retirement comes after a former department employee tipped off city investigators that Collins “has had a no show job,” according to a complaint obtained by Chalkbeat and first
reported by the New York Post. The former employee, who requested anonymity, said Collins had not appeared at work since last Thanksgiving.
A spokesperson for the Special Commissioner of Investigation confirmed they received the complaint and are “looking into the matter.” The city’s Department of Investigation is also reviewing the allegations,
according to the Daily News, which first reported Collins’ retirement. A DOI spokesperson declined to comment.
Some evidence seems to back concerns about Collins’ absence. In the eight months after being promoted as a senior advisor in the Division of School Leadership, about three-quarters of the days on her work calendar were empty, according to
records first revealed by Chalkbeat.
Her calendar showed about 40 scheduled meetings and events, including “hot heat” sessions to review superintendent performance, a one-on-one sitdown with a school food leader, and meetings with officials managing the influx of migrant students.
Officials at the Education Department’s public records office said this week they could not provide more recent versions of Collins’ daily schedule until February, despite initially indicating the records would be provided Nov. 5. (The department regularly ignores its own deadlines for responding to public records requests.)
Collins could not be reached for comment. Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer did not say why she retired.
“Ms. Collins served public school students for over 30 years as a teacher, principal, and administrator, and we wish her the best in her retirement,” Styer wrote in an email. He noted that her responsibilities included “strategic planning, making recommendations on agency priorities, and providing advice and support to senior leadership.”Collins was thrust into the spotlight through the mayor’s federal indictment last month. She allegedly benefitted from tens of thousands of dollars in travel perks from Turkish officials who sought to influence Adams, according to the indictment. Those benefits were not listed on Collins’ financial disclosure forms as required,
Politico first reported. Adams also omitted them.
Collins has not been charged with any crimes connected to that investigation. A spokesperson for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board said they could not confirm whether the agency is looking into the matter.
Questions about Collins’ role at the Education Department
began swirling soon after she landed a promotion in 2022, where she earned about $221,000 as a senior advisor.
Along with other non-union Education Department officials, Collins recently got a pay bump, bringing her salary to nearly $253,000, records show.
Collins moved this summer from the Division of School Leadership to be a senior advisor for the deputy chancellor of family and community engagement — a role occupied at the time by Melissa Aviles-Ramos. Aviles-Ramos was
appointed schools chancellor last month after David Banks abruptly
stepped down under pressure from the mayor. (Banks’ electronic devices were seized in September by federal investigators, though he has not been accused of wrongdoing.)
Collins isn’t the only Education Department official related to Adams. The mayor’s sister-in-law also got a job in the school system,
earning a significant pay bump. Still, Adams has rejected any suggestion that his relationship with Collins helped her win a promotion and has defended her work ethic.
“There was a job vacancy. She filed for it. Being the significant other of the mayor should not stop your track,” he previously told reporters. “Tracey does her job and she does it well.”
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at
azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
