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Schools Chancellor David Banks’ exit could come at a better time for Mayor Eric Adams, but Banks plainly discussed the decision with Adams some time ago, allowing the mayor to immediately announce his chosen successor, Melissa Avilés-Ramos — and see reason to hope she’ll serve the city’s public schoolchildren well.
That Avilés-Ramos got brought back into the Department of Education in July, after leaving for a private-sector job in January, pretty strongly suggests that preparations for the succession are longstanding, and Banks’ decision to go has nothing to do with the slew of federal investigations plaguing the Adams team.
And Avilés-Ramos has real promise to follow the reform path Banks outlined when he started, but had such trouble following.
She’s a DOE veteran, but she gets the despair of the city’s parents over the DOE system: On Wednesday, she spoke of how her mother got her into a Catholic school after the public schools failed her two older sisters.
That spoke directly to city families increasingly fleeing the DOE system for religious and private education, charter schools and even home-schooling (or even leaving Gotham altogether for the kids’ sake).
Banks did far less than we’d hoped to bring the bloated DOE bureaucracy to heel; he was too reluctant to decisively undo the worst decisions of his de Blasio-era predecessors; the teachers union also outmaneuvered him (and City Hall itself) time and again.
We hope Avilés-Ramos proves to be of sterner stuff.
At least a third of the city’s public schools are good or even excellent, and not just those just named 2024 National Blue Ribbon winners: A wise chancellor will work to transfer those successes’ “best practices” across the whole system, including practices that keep schools safe and bring down skyrocketing truancy rates.
Avilés-Ramos on Wednesday pledged to stop the flight from DOE schools by winning back parents’ trust and confidence.
She has three months to work with Banks on getting a team in place to deliver on those promises.
All New Yorkers of goodwill should be rooting for her.
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