By Adam Kramer
In a Dec. 12 letter to the Board of Ed, School Board President Nathaniel Washington said the chancellor has not remained neutral in the C-37 superintendent selection process and has publicly lobbied for District Administrator Michael Johnson to get the job running the district, which has 27,000 students in 28 schools.
“We request that the chancellor be removed from this process immediately; he has shown by his actions that he cannot remain impartial,” Washington said in the letter.
“We also request that the school board be granted its right to name an interim acting superintendent until a replacement can be found,” the letter said. “The longstanding position of district administrator is hampering our ability to do our jobs as school board members.”
Washington accused Levy and his staff in the letter of trying to influence the superintendent selection process by contacting members of the C-37 committee. He said the chancellor sent letters and made phone calls to the committee lobbying for “a particular candidate,” which had never been done before.
Levy's office refused to comment.
The chancellor chooses the superintendent from a list submitted to him by the school board. The school board picks the candidates it wants to send to the chancellor from the list of candidates submitted by the C-37 search committee.
District 29 has been in turmoil for nearly two years since then-Superintendent Celestine Miller was fired in February 1999 by former Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew for delaying to report that an 8-year-old boy had gone into a Rosedale school carrying a loaded gun.
Since Miller's dismissal, the school district, which stretches from Queens Village to Laurelton and from Jamaica to Springfield Gardens, has been in flux. Miller was recently indicted on bid-rigging charges involving computer sales to schools under her command.
After Miller left, an acting interim superintendent was appointed by Crew to run the district.
Shortly after taking over as acting chancellor in January, Levy suspended School Board 29 in mid-February and appointed Johnson as district administrator – replacing the acting superintendent – until a new superintendent could be found.
Levy reinstated the school board in late May.
In August the board decided under protest to submit four names to the chancellor for the vacant superintendent's position filled temporarily by Johnson. Levy had rejected the board's first choice, Rhia Warren, the principal of IS 226 in South Ozone Park.
The chancellor wants Johnson's name to be submitted by the search committee, which did not include him in its final cut for candidates for superintendent of the school district. Levy can only appoint Johnson if his name is submitted to the school board by the C-37 committee.
The C-37 committee recently resubmitted the names of the five candidates already rejected by Levy.
On Dec. 7 the chancellor met with the district's C-37 search committee and spoke with more then 500 residents in the divided school district.
“It is our understanding of the C-37 process that the C-37 committee membership is to remain autonomous and should be given the right to deliberate without tampering from the school board or anyone else,” Washington said in the letter. “The chancellor's actions in that 'closed door' meeting and his speech later at an open meeting have done the community irreparable harm to this process and community.”
