Richard Carranza of Houston Named NYC Schools Chancellor

NEW YORK, NY — The question of who would lead New York City's 1.1 million public school students was opened up Thursday as Alberto Carvalho, the Miami school superintendent, backed out of the job on live television.

But the students now have an answer — Richard Carranza, the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, has stepped in to succeed Chancellor Carmen Fariña, who will retire at the end of this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday.

"Richard, in everything he’s done, has been devoted to children, and he has been a change agent through his work," de Blasio said Monday at a City Hall news conference.

Carranza's appointment comes just four days after Carvalho dramatically jilted New York by deciding to stay in his post with Miami-Dade County Public Schools after the school board and residents there begged him not to leave.

After taking the helm in Houston in August 2016, Carranza led Texas' largest school district through last year's disaster of Hurricane Harvey, reopening schools in September just two weeks after historic flooding struck the city.

Calling him an "educator's educator," de Blasio said Carranza built a record of driving up test scores and graduation rates while narrowing achievement gaps among disadvantaged students as the superintendent of San Francisco's public schools.

As chancellor, Carranza will be charged with continuing the progress Fariña made toward those goals in New York. He will also be involved in de Blasio's other education initiatives, such as the expansion of his universal pre-kindergarten program and his effort to increase the number of kids reading on grade level by third grade.

Carranza, the son of Mexican immigrants and a fluent Spanish speaker, was de Blasio's second choice to lead the nation's largest public school system. The mayor said he called Carranza last Wednesday telling him Carvalho would take the job. But less than a day later, after Carvalho backed out in reality-show fashion, de Blasio was on the phone with Carranza again.

Carranza verbally accepted the job around 10 p.m. Sunday after meeting in person all weekend with the mayor and other administration officials, de Blasio said.

"Everything happens for a reason in life, and I feel that we’ve ended up in a very, very good place," de Blasio said.

Carranza said he is "completely aligned" with de Blasio's educational philosophy. While his specific policy ideas may diverge as he becomes more familiar with the city's schools, he said, he praised the mayor's broad goal of improving educational equity.

"When the conversations became real and the offer was made, it was very easy for me to say, 'Absolutely, I would like to be part of this movement that is happening in New York City to empower, through an equity lens, all of our different communities,'" Carranza said.

De Blasio said Carranza's salary as chancellor will be the same as his base pay in Houston — $345,000 a year, according to the Houston Chronicle. That's over $110,000 more than Fariña's 2017 salary of $234,569 and $120,000 above de Blasio's $225,000 annual salary.

The mayor said last week that the city would be prepared to match any chancellor candidate's current pay. De Blasio faced questions about offering Carvalho $353,000 a year, also far more than Fariña's pay even though she has more than 40 years' experience as an educator. The mayor's press secretary noted last week that Fariña also gets a $211,000 annual pension.

(Lead image: Richard Carranza speaks to a second-grader in Houston on Sept. 11, 2017, the day schools in the Texas city reopened after Hurricane Harvey overwhelmed the area. Photo by David J. Phillip/Associated Press)