Next NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks talks with us
about specialized schools, year-round education and more
Caribbean Life, December 17-23, 2021 31
By Stephen Witt
Eagle Academy Founder and CEO
David Banks was recently appointed by
Mayor-elect Eric Adams to become the
New York City Schools Chancellor in
January.
Banks is a pioneering educator with
decades of experience in the New York
City school system. Born in Crown
Heights, he attended public schools
and credits two inspirational teachers
for inspiring him to become an educator.
He began his career in 1986 as a
teacher at PS 167 in Crown Heights.
After working as an Assistant Principal
at PS 191, he co-founded the Bronx
School of Law, Government, and Justice
before founding Eagle Academy, a
network of district schools that serve
low-income Black and Latino boys in
grades six through twelve. Eagle Academy
schools currently have a campus in
each borough and consistently outperform
other City schools.
Schneps Media recently had the
opportunity to interview Mr. Banks
on his plans for running the nation’s
largest school system. The following
interview was lightly edited for clarity
and length.
Schneps Media (SM): Yesterday on
WPIX you floated the idea of having
more elite schools with different admissions
criteria. Can you expound about
that and does this mean you are okay
with the SHSAT at the current Elite
schools?
David Banks (DB): What I’m doing
right now is working with Mayor-Elect
Adams and his position right now is
he doesn’t want to change admissions
criteria for the current schools, and so
the notion of creating more specialized
schools is something again that the
mayor-elect has talked about. And those
additional schools would have a different
set of admission criteria. Maybe
instead of just accepting students that
take the test, we’ll look at other things
like community service and teacher recommendations.
It could be a number of
things. We haven’t settled on it yet. I’m
just saying that it is possible to have
a different set of admissions criteria.
Maybe just taking the top students in
the 3-to5% of the graduating class from
middle school and opening it up. I think
these students have already proven that
they’re the most accelerated hardworking
learners in our middle schools. And
so you’re looking at different approaches,
but we don’t have a stated position
on it yet. I’m not even in the office, but
it’s offering just kind of a general, big
picture vision here.
SM: Mayor-elect Adams has mentioned
on the campaign trail more of
a year-round school year. Do you have
any ideas on how you would like to see
the school year change – for example
four days a week instead of five during
the school year and institute that as
year-round schooling?
DB: Again, it’s still an idea that has
to be developed and we have not developed
it as of yet. What we are saying is
that we want to be taking full advantage
of all the time that we possibly can.
It’s going to be critically important.
That means what do you do after three
o’clock for the use of extended learning
time, or use Saturday, something that
we do at the Eagle Academy. A lot of
our boys come to school on Saturday,
as well. And then there is summertime.
For many of our kids that’s a dead zone
where there’s nothing going on for two
months. We want to take advantage of
that. It’s really important. That’s something
that came to light with what’s
been happening with COVID where so
many of our kids have really fallen even
further behind.
But that does not necessarily mean
mandating that all teachers have to
work Saturdays or after school, or in
the summer. We will certainly look at
opportunities for teachers to get additional
pay, but we also want to engage
community-based organizations. There
are thousands of community-based
organizations across the state who are
ready to lean in and we want to provide
an opportunity for them to provide
additional support after school. So you
know, a young person may go for basic
core work with the regular teachers
during the school day but after school,
maybe they’re working with the Children’s
Aid Society, Good Shepherd, or
all the other organizations as they work
in these spaces. Utilizing places like the
PAL 9Police Athletic League).
SM: The needs of Special Needs kids
is pretty broad, but what will be your
immediate initiatives for kids with special
needs in public schools?
DB: Access to services is so critically
important. I can’t say what would be
the thing most immediately needed,
but I’m literally just coming from visiting
the Windward School on the Upper
East Side. It’s the preeminent but private
school in New York State for kids
with dyslexia. So I think one of the first
things we’re going to be doing is screening
to identify the many kids in our
system that have never been identified
with these learning disabilities.
We’re going to have to develop a
level of professional development and
training for each student where they’re
able to help provide a level of deeper
context for the teaching of reading. The
basic approach that we use right now
is something called balanced literacy.
I think this has been a failed approach,
and particularly for black and brown
kids. I certainly would like to see us
return to a phonetic approach to teaching
reading, which I think is based in
real-time. That’s what they do at the
Windward School, and they turn the
lives around of so many young people.
The challenge is that a place like
Windward is a place that pretty much
is for affluent families, overwhelmingly
white families who could afford to take
a course. But I don’t think you need to
be white and afford to learn how to read
and so that’s what we’re going to be
committed to doing. A full-on redirection
of our school system and teaching
our kids the fundamental nature of how
to read. It’s going to take them a while
and it won’t happen overnight, but our
commitment will begin on day one.
SM: What common ground with the
United Federation of Teachers union
would you point out as a starting point
to working with them in partnership to
improve city schools?
DB: I think the UFT as a union
should be focused on how to provide the
best experience for the teachers. I want
the teachers to have that joy of teaching,
and you get a joy of teaching when
you have a level of success.
The UFT currently has a bill that
they’ve been promoting on reducing
class size. I don’t know that we’ll be able
to do that for the entire system, but in
areas of the greatest level of overcrowding,
we can work very closely with the
teachers union on that. We want to be
able to offer up a little bit more autonomy
throughout the schools, particularly
in the middle and high school level,
to be able to help create a curriculum
that will work best for the population
that they have.
We want to be able to offer that kind
of freedom to schools, but it’s got to be
what I call earned autonomy. You can’t
tell me that you want autonomy when
all the kids are at a failing school. So
we’ve got to put some basic metrics in
place. I’ve been a union member have
throughout my career as a teacher as
part of the UFT and was a CSA Council
of School Supervisors & Administrators
union member when I became
an assistant principal and a principal.
I believe in what unions represent, but
there are limits. We want the union
to be partners for the greatest good of
what needs to happen in our schools
and for our teachers.
SM: What best practices instituted at
the Eagle Academy would you like to
institute across the DOE?
DB: We’ve solicited communitybased
groups and we’ve solicited individuals
who served as mentors with our
kids. At every school are a number of
kids that would really struggle. If they
had a mentor it could be transformative
for them. That’s one. We also always
used the mantra of the 100 black men
organization which is they will be what
they see and what does that mean? That
we got to expose them to people and
careers that will help them to dream of
a great possibility. How can you dream
of becoming an investment banker if
you’ve never met one or the dream of a
career in the biotech industry if you’ve
never seen anybody who’s ever done
that?
Those are things that we do at Eagle,
which creates the aha moment for the
kids to get the lights to go on and help
to put context for their learning. That’s
what we’ve done and I think that we can
absolutely scale. We want to get corporations
across the city to provide internship
opportunities for all of our kids.
We think that that’s something that is
doable and we will be very focused on
it across the system. Childhood college
access. That’s a big deal we do at Eagle.
We take them to different colleges. We
have called representatives from universities
across the country who come
in and meet with parents. We have kids
who are in college now who come back
to the neighborhoods that they grew up
in and talk to the kids about how exciting
it is to go to college.
SM: Finally, If you were to revisit
your tenure as chancellor in 10 years
what accomplishments would you take
pride in seeing?
DB: A very reimagined school system.
That kids are not locked in on dayto
day school. That you’ll school connected
to mastery learning and not the
traditional 45 minute period that you
have in high school for four years until
we graduate you. I would love to engage
in mastery learning where magic kids
could graduate high school in three
years if they’ve mastered all the content,
providing that type of incentive. I
want to see kids in high school openly
engage in the corporate space through
internships. I want to see a teaching
course that has been exposed to what
the 21st-century economy and workforce
really look like. Teachers have no
idea what it means to work at Google
or Microsoft. I want to see them in a
professional development experience.
Those are some of the things that I
was like.
Davis C. Banks was appointed to become
the NYC Schools Chancellor in
Mayor-Elect Eric Adams administration.