8
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, MARCH 25-31, 2022 BXR
BY ASHER LEHRER-SMALL
This story is published in partnership
with The 74, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan news site covering education
in America.
To most New York City residents,
it may have seemed like a
boring, bureaucratic change.
In early March, Schools Chancellor
David Banks announced
he would eliminate the executive
superintendent role from the Department
of Education’s internal
structure and require district
superintendents to re-apply for
their jobs. The shifts received a
quick mention in The New York
Times story covering the chancellor’s
remarks, his first major
address as head of the DOE.
But to Bronx parent Ilka Rios,
the news hit like a thunderbolt.
“Initially, when the chancellor
made the announcement, at
that point, I didn’t hear nothing
else that came out of his mouth,”
she said.
To her, the update meant only
one thing: Her borough, which
suffers the city’s highest poverty
rates and lowest high school graduation
rates, would lose a leader
who had finally started to turn
around the area’s schools, Erika
Tobia.
“Dr. Tobia has been a godsend
to the Bronx,” Rios told The
74. “Every time the Bronx finds
someone to help them get better,
it’s like someone from downtown
swoops in and removes them.”
A 30-year education veteran
in the borough, Tobia had only
assumed her post as executive
superintendent 11 months prior.
The position itself was created
just three years earlier in 2018
under former Chancellor Richard
Carranza, who added the roles to
increase oversight and support
for district superintendents.
With a total of eight positions,
one or two per borough, eliminating
the posts will save millions of
dollars, said Chancellor Banks,
who founded a Bronx high school
early in his career.
“We want to push those dollars
closer to schools,” the chancellor
later said. “That’s all this
is about.”
The idea that parents would
rally to preserve an additional
layer of bureaucracy is hardly
typical and, indeed, not all parents
are equally enamored with
their executive superintendent.
In Brooklyn, Yuli Hsu praised the
chancellor’s move.
“When the previous chancellor
added the executive level of superintendents,
to me it just added
another level of expense and bureaucracy,”
she told The 74. “I
haven’t really noticed any impactful
change since Executive
Superintendent Karen Watts arrived”
in her role in North Brooklyn.
The 74 reached out directly
to each of the city’s eight executive
superintendents. None responded.
In the Bronx, Tobia’s parentfirst
style won families over.
The leader ran food drives,
held sessions to build trust between
campus police and families
and launched a series of
“Master Classes” for adult education
that regularly drew dozens
of participants. Every month,
Tobia held gatherings — dubbed
“just us” meetings because she
honored parents’ request that no
other district officials attend —
for families to share their education
concerns, said Rios, who was
president of the Community Education
Council in the borough’s
District 12 for nearly a decade.
“For us in the Bronx, it’s really
important because we never
had that voice before,” said Farah
Despeignes, District 8’s CEC president.
“That is why parents are so
upset… that they would eliminate
that position.”
With parents and school leaders
across the city looking to get
a handle on the new administration’s
education agenda, they say
how the chancellor moves forward
with his planned shakeup
will be an early test of his priorities
and willingness to incorporate
community voices.
So far, Rios remains unsatisfied.
“The chancellor nor the mayor,
neither one of them brought us to
the table to ask us parent leaders
how it was working with Tobia,”
she said. “They just made the decision,
‘We’re eliminating the position.’
And I get it, eliminate the
position, but then tell us, you’re
going to put her somewhere else
NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks (left) visits a school in Co-op City. Photo | Robbie Sequeira
in the district.”
Despeignes penned a December
letter on behalf of her parent
organization, NYC Coalition
for Educating Families Together,
to then Mayor-elect Eric Adams
urging him to consider the Bronx
executive superintendent for a
post where she could engage with
and uplift families across the city.
Banks has dropped indicators
that he may still heed their advice.
While the executive superintendent
role will be going away at
the end of this school year, some
of those leaders “may reappear in
other positions” in the DOE, he
said.
During a state legislative
hearing two days after the chancellor’s
announcement, Bronx
Assemblywoman Chantel Jackson
pressed Banks on his choice
to get rid of the position prized by
many of her constituents.
The chancellor empathized:
“I’ve heard from a lot of parents
in the Bronx who are really supportive
of the Executive Superintendent
Tobia,” he said. “I’ve
become very fond of her myself
in the two months that I’ve been
here and I’ve seen her work — so
stay tuned.”
“We are working diligently
to finalize the execution of the
chancellor’s announcement and
additional details are forthcoming,”
a DOE spokesperson wrote
in a March14 email to The 74.
Experts agreed with Banks’s
stance that, structurally, the
role “adds a level of bureaucracy
without adding enough value to
schools and students.” According
to David Bloomfield, the extra
layer actually restricts the authority
of local leaders.
“The executive superintendents
handcuffed the superintendents,
and now the superintendents
will be freer,” said the
Brooklyn College and CUNY
Graduate Center education professor.
“This is a win-win,” he added.
Because there will now be 46 superintendents
— presumably
some of them new faces after the
reapplication process — reporting
to the chancellor rather than
eight executive superintendents,
“the chancellor’s office is going to
have more information to assess
its policies and the principals and
superintendents will be able to
act with more discretion.”
Since taking office in January,
Banks has repeatedly vowed to
improve the city’s schools “from
the bottom up” by giving principals
more autonomy, an agenda
item reminiscent of the Bloomberg
era.
Parent leaders like Kaliris Sa-
Losing a ‘Godsend to the
Bronx’: Parents push back
against DOE shakeup