Hizzoner gets a 2nd chance-llor
Taps Houston big (and he accepts)
Mayor de Blasio tapped a second-choice schools chancellor on Monday — Houston superintendent Richard Carranza — days after being brutally rebuffed by Miami schools chief Alberto Carvalho.
The son of a metalworker and a hairdresser, Carranza, 51, has been the head of the Houston Independent School District since 2016 and led San Francisco’s system for four years prior to that.
He will now helm the nation’s largest school system, with an enrollment of 1.1 million students — far larger than San Francisco’s roughly 50,000 and Houston’s 210,000.
De Blasio said Carranza’s annual salary would be the same as it was in Houston — $343,000. Current Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, who will officially exit at the end of the month, makes $233,430 a year.
The former teacher and principal praised Fariña as his educational “hero” at an introductory press conference on Monday. He also effusively lauded his new boss, de Blasio.
“I think philosophically we are completely aligned,” he said.
Carranza’s priorities rang familiar to New Yorkers Monday as he stressed lower reliance on testing, a focus on social services, LGBTQ rights, support for immigrant children and closing racial achievement gaps.
He said his goal was to “accelerate” initiatives already set in motion by de Blasio and Fariña.
In San Francisco, Carranza pushed for reduced suspensions and bolstered LGBTQ and ethnicstudies curriculums while avoiding any major scandals.
But as word of his new appointment spread, the Houston Chronicle said on Monday that he was leaving the Houston Independent School District “in turmoil.”
The newspaper said the district faces a $115 million budget shortfall and potential state control of poorly performing districts.
Asked about the financial chaos back home, Carranza blamed “systemic” flaws that he had no hand in creating.
Again echoing de Blasio, Car- ranza said he respected successful charters schools but prioritized traditional public schools.
The native Arizonan cast himself as a tested administrator and noted that he served in Houston after floods devastated the area last year.
Fluent in Spanish and an accomplished mariachi musician, Carranza had been coveted by several big-city school systems.
De Blasio said on Monday that Carranza had been his second choice after Carvalho, the flamboyant head of the Miami-Dade County school system.
Hizzoner resumed contact with Carranza immediately after Carvalho refused the chancellor post on live TV Thursday.
De Blasio and Carranza met the weekend in New York before finalizing the appointment.
Carvalho chose to keep his old job after backers begged him to stay during an emergency MiamiDade County school board meeting Thursday.
De Blasio said at the time that he was blindsided by the change of heart and that he hoped to quickly name a replacement.
Here’s hoping that Richard Carranza is a smashing success as city schools chancellor — and that Mayor de Blasio gives him the freedom to bring the “system change” that First Lady Chirlane McCray says Carranza wants.
We were happy to see Carranza hold out an olive branch to charter schools in his introductory press conference, saying he’s in favor of any schools that provide children with a good education.
And his record shows he’s willing to close schools that fail to do that, which is a nice break from the approach of retiring Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
Indeed, reality seems to have sunk in with Team de Blasio on this front: The city last month finalized 10 school closures, a record for this mayor’s tenure.
Carranza has also proved willing to embrace alternative talent pools for good teachers, such as Teach for America. Good: The city needs that openness to new ideas.
City Hall touts Carranza’s past success in raising graduation rates to historic highs as well as his record of narrowing the achievement gap and turning around struggling schools. New York can indeed use real results on all those fronts.
Showing he learned how to play politics while leading systems in Las Vegas, San Francisco and Houston, Carranza also said, “There’s no daylight between Mayor de Blasio and myself.”
But Education Week profiled him as a national 2015 Leader to Learn From. Let’s hope de Blasio is willing to learn from his new chancellor — rather than surround him with political minders who frustrate Carranza’s goal of creating “joyful learning” in city classrooms. New York’s schoolchildren deserve a chancellor who makes them, not adult “stakeholders,” his priority.
Carranza won national praise for leading the successful effort to reopen Houston schools two weeks after Hurricane Harvey hit, taking care of students, families and teachers who suffered. He’ll find that managing a system in crisis was excellent practice for taking over New York’s schools.