Incoming Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter has made it her mission to racially renew job roles as she moved up the ranks of the Ministry of Education – often at the expense of white and Jewish educators, critics argue.
Porter once boasted about her quota.
“When I select school principals, teachers or leaders – after we have made the list, we look at it and count: how many women, how many people of color and why. Who we chose and why, ”Porter said.
“I look at the makeup, and I literally count – and it’s okay for us to do that,” Porter told a 2018 panel at Fordham University.
The educator, approached by Mayor de Blasio to replace Richard Carranza after the chancellor abruptly announced his resignation on Friday, has been accused of discriminating against older, white and Jewish educators in at least two recent lawsuits.
She is not mentioned as a prosecutor in either action, but is accused of creating a hostile environment.
Porter, the first black woman to run the nation’s largest school system, rose from teacher to superintendent in District 11 of the Bronx. Carranza went on to promote Porter as one of nine new ‘executive superintendents’ in August 2018, months after arriving in New York. She made $ 209,479 last year.
“Disrupt and dismantle,” was Porter’s rallying cry.
“I say almost every day that one of my jobs is to disrupt and dismantle systemic racism,” she told the Fordham forum. And every time I say it, I’m scared. I’m afraid that’s misunderstood, that people will misquote, mislead, mislead what that means. But I keep saying it. ”
But some called it an excuse to coerce or ‘marginalize’ certain workers – ‘especially older white women in leadership positions’, charges Karen Ames, a veteran Bronx superintendent who was demoted and pressured to leave, in a lawsuit which was brought in this month.
Ames alleges in the lawsuit that her 30-year career, including such successes as increasing math grades in struggling schools, was derailed by Carranza’s “equality” agenda.
Porter once “ humiliated ” Ames during a discussion about repurposing schools in the Throgs Neck area to achieve racial equality. Porter told Ames she couldn’t participate because she is white, the suit says.
The lawsuit also says that Porter, along with a new superintendent, Erika Tobia, has “taken negative employment action against Jewish members of the District 8 team,” including Nicky Rosen, who now works as Director of Continuous Improvement in District 7.
Nicky Rosen has been transferred to District 7 against her will, the charges allege.
A downgraded Jewish clerk said his treatment by Porter was “unprofessional and inappropriate.” He said she did not communicate with him and that his complaint to the DOE Equal Opportunities Office was ignored.
At the end of the meetings, Porter was known to ask inspectors to fold their arms in a ‘Wakanda Forever’ greeting from the movie ‘Black Panther’.
Rafaela Espinal, principal of Community School District 12 in the Bronx, said she was fired without explanation after repeatedly refusing to hold the “Wakanda Forever” salute, according to a lawsuit. While Espinal and many others considered it a gesture of “black power,” DOE officials claim the greeting means “Bronx Strong.”
Espinal, a Dominican-American who identifies as Afro-Latina, said Porter rebuked her for not being “black enough.”
The two latest lawsuits follow two other lawsuits in which four female executives accused the Carranza administration of demoting or pushing them out in large part for being white.
Like Carranza, Porter’s focus on race has been criticized for divisive and touches on the central mission of improving the education offered by schools in NYC.
‘I dare you to think about what [diversity] means when you leave work, ”she told the Fordham forum. “Who your children associate with. Who comes to eat at your place. Who you eat with. Who you talk to. Because that changes the story and the experience. If we change what is happening in the dynamics of our own family and our own home, thereafter we change the world. “
Wai Wah Chin, founder and chairman of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, which advocates merit-based policies, maintains his view of Porter.
“Is she really for all students, or will she paint by color?” Chin asked. “We hope that the toxic anti-Asian racism that Carranza brought with him is gone and that his replacement is better.”
Chin added, ‘Her primary job is to educate all children. Everything else is secondary. “
While Porter was a member of the Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group, which opposed gifted and talented programs and schools ‘screening’ for the best students, in 2017 she pulled the strings to help a child born from a friend, to get a better school.
Rather than enroll the child in her zoned elementary school, which was 90 percent Hispanic and Black and 8 percent White, Porter asked for a seat in another school that was 67 percent Hispanic and Black and 15 percent White – and offered offers advanced lessons for gifted children.
“She was ushered in by higher people,” said a DOE insider. “They knew who she was.”
A $ 45,000 gala organized to celebrate Porter’s birthday and promotion to executive superintendent remains the subject of open investigation by the Special Commissioner for Research for City Schools.
Employees offered more than $ 111 per person to attend the lavish affair at Villa Barone Manor, a Bronx catering hall with a buffet, DJ and open bar. Wearing a tiara and glittery white dress, Porter made a grand entrance in a glass elevator that opened onto the ballroom – an adornment that cost an additional $ 500.
Under the DOE rules, the celebration of a colleague’s promotion should be “held in school” and “should have a modest financial cost.”
SCI was charged with serving in the case to protect de Blasio and Carranza.
“It’s no surprise that the NY Post is looking for a reason to tear down the first black woman to be named chancellor,” said DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson. “Ms. Porter is respected by colleagues in town and is qualified for the track – this is ridiculous race fighting and she is not a defendant in the lawsuits.”