Council eye on DeB ‘probe-block’ allies

City Council leaders plan to hold public hearings on the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, including allegations the Department of Education watchdog has blocked probes of Mayor de Blasio, his wife and Chancellor Richard Carranza.

“We are discussing internally a plan and date” for the hearings, said a spokesman for Councilman Ritchie Torres, chairman of the oversight and investigations committee.

“I share the opinion that the lack of effective oversight over the DOE is a gaping hole in good government,” Torres has told The Post. “Stay tuned.”

The public inquiry comes after Torres, Councilman Mark Treyger, chairman of the education committee, and Councilman Robert Holden received an anonymous whistleblower complaint by “SCI Investigative Staff,” dated Aug. 20, which charged nine cases involving “top-level executives” were stymied.

After de Blasio fired former Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters — who in 2018 tried to seize control of the SCI — the whistleblower letter states, “investigations and reports harmful to the administration would be dealt with differently than other SCI investigations.”

Special Commissioner of Investigation Anastasia Coleman, hired by de Blasio after he axed Peters, has denied favoring the mayor and his top appointees, saying, “SCI has not, and will never, slow-walk an investigation based on the subject or the subject matter of the complaint.”

A spokeswoman for de Blasio called charges of City Hall interference in SCI probes “untrue and ridiculous.”

Some of the nine cases pertain to high-profile programs such as de Blasio’s failed $773 million Renewal program for struggling schools. The letter cites “a bloated bureaucracy, systemic contract fraud and implementation of artificial benchmarks” to measure progress.

The letter also cites a case involving “money spent and influence of City Hall” in First Lady Chirlane McCray’s $850 million Thrive program for mental health. Thrive has doled out $145 million to the DOE since Fiscal Year 2016 for school mentalhealth clinics, training and consultants, records show.

Exactly which schools got the money and how it was spent is unclear.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who has blasted the lack of social workers at some needy schools, told The Post she wants a briefing on Thrive’s expenditures.

Other SCI cases entail “investigations into corruption by Carranza,” the letter states.

One case stems, The Post learned, from a complaint of a “hostile work environment.”

The lack of effective oversight over the DOE is a gaping hole in good government. Councilman Ritchie Torres