Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter, of the incoming schools, has taken on her mission to racially renew employment records as she rose through the ranks of the Department of Education, often at the expense of white and Jewish educators, according to critics.
Porter once boasted of his quotas.
“When I select principals, teachers or leaders, after making the list, we look at it and count: how many women, how many people of color and Because. Who we chose and why, ”said Porter.
“I look at makeup and I literally count, and it’s okay for us to do that,” Porter told a 2018 court at Fordham University.
The educator, approved by Blasio’s mayor to replace Richard Carranza after the chancellor abruptly announced his resignation on Friday, is accused in at least two recent lawsuits of discriminating against older, white and Jewish educators.
She is not designated as a plaintiff in either action, but is accused of creating a hostile environment.
Porter, the first black woman to lead the country’s largest school system, went from teacher to superintendent in the Bronx 11 district. Carranza promoted Porter as one of nine new “executive superintendents” in August 2018, months after arriving in New York. Last year he earned $ 209,479.
“Interrupt and dismantle” was Porter’s meeting cry.
“I say almost every day that one of my jobs is to disrupt and dismantle systemic racism,” he told the Fordham forum. “It simply came to our notice then. I’m afraid it’s going to be taken the wrong way, that people are going to misquote, misrepresent, misdirect what that means. But I keep saying that. ”
But some called it an excuse to force or “marginalize” certain employees, “especially elderly Caucasian women in leadership positions,” accuses Karen Ames, a veteran Bronx superintendent who was demoted and pressured. for him to leave, in a lawsuit filed this month.
Ames claims in the lawsuit that her 30-year career, which included successes such as increasing math scores in troubled schools, was derailed by Carranza’s “equity” agenda.
Porter once “humiliated” Ames during a discussion about streamlining schools in the Throgs Neck area to achieve racial equity. Porter told Ames she couldn’t participate because she was white, depending on the dress.
The lawsuit also says Porter, along with a new superintendent, Erika Tobia, “took negative labor action against Jewish members of the District 8 team,” including Nicky Rosen, who now works as a director of continuous improvement in District 7. .
“Nicky Rosen moved against his will to District 7,” the lawsuit alleges.
A degraded Jewish administrator said his treatment by Porter was “unprofessional and not enforceable.” He said he did not communicate with him and that his complaint to the DOE’s Office of Equal Opportunities was ignored.
Porter was known to ask superintendents to end the meetings by crossing their arms in a “Wakanda Forever” greeting from the movie “Black Panther.”
Rafaela Espinal, who ran the 12th Community School District in the Bronx, said she was fired without explanation after repeatedly refusing to make the “Wakanda Forever” greeting, according to a lawsuit. Although Espinal and many others considered it a gesture of “black power,” DOE officials insist the greeting means “Bronx Strong.”
Espinal, a Dominican-American who identifies as Afro-Latino, said Porter punished her for not being “black enough.”
The last two lawsuits follow two other lawsuits in which four executives accused the Carranza administration of dismissing or expelling them largely because they were white.
Like Carranza, Porter’s approach to race has been criticized as divisive and tangential to the central mission of improving the education offered by New York schools.
“I challenge you to think what [diversity] it means when you leave work, “he said at the Fordham forum.” Who your children are involved with. Who comes to dinner at your house. Who you dine with. Who you talk to. Because that changes the narrative and the experience. When we change what happens in the dynamics of our own family and our homes, then we are changing the world “.
Wai Wah Chin, founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, which advocates policies based on merit, reserves the judgment on Porter.
“Is it really for all students, or will it paint by color?” Chin asked. “We hope that the toxic anti-Asian racism that Carranza provoked has disappeared and that his replacement is better.”
Chin added: “His main job is to educate all children. Everything else is secondary. “
Although Porter was a member of de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group, which opposed gifted and talented programs and schools that “selected” the best students, he pulled the strings in 2017 to get a child he received from a friend at a better school.
Instead of enrolling the child in his zoned elementary school, which had 90% Hispanics and blacks and 8% whites, Porter asked for a seat at another school that had 67% Hispanics and blacks and 15% whites and offered advanced classes for gifted children.
“It was introduced by incremental majors,” a DOE expert said. “They knew who he was.”
A $ 45,000 gala launched to celebrate Porter’s birthday and promotion to executive superintendent continues to be the subject of an open investigation by the city’s special commissioner of research for schools.
Employees earned more than $ 111 per person to attend the lavish adventure of Villa Barone Manor, a Bronx dining room that offers a buffet, DJ and bar. Wearing a tiara and a bright white dress, Porter made a grand entrance into a glass elevator that went up to the ballroom, a flourish that cost an additional $ 500.
According to DOE rules, celebrations for the promotion of a co-worker “should be held at school” and “should have a modest financial cost”.
SCI was accused of sitting in the case to protect from Blasio and Carranza.
“It’s no wonder the NY Post can find any reason to overthrow the first black woman to be named chancellor,” DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson said. “Ma’am. Porter is respected by her peers all over town and is qualified to deal with; that’s a ridiculous attraction and not a defendant in lawsuits.”