Schools Chancellor Speaks Teacher to Teacher in First Public Address

Richard Carranza spoke publicly for the first time since stepping into the role of New York City Schools Chancellor. He addressed a group of teachers from across the city taking part in at a training on science and technology education at Stuyvesant High School.

“It's especially important to me today, that on the second day on the job for me, that I have an opportunity to speak to my colleagues,” he told the group of teachers from across the city. “You see, I was a teacher for almost a decade."

Carranza taught high school bilingual classes and worked as a principal before he became superintendent of schools in San Francisco and then in Houston.

“What I have found in my experiences is that if we do not lead from a sense of equity, and if we do not lead from a sense of protecting our students and lifting our students, then who will?” Carranza said to teachers, before thanking them for the work they do.

Elisha Echandy teaches science at P.S. 152 in Manhattan and said she was encouraged when Carranza referred to teachers as his colleagues.

“I hope that he really takes into account more feedback from teachers, and parents as well, but teachers, ‘cause we're in it. We're in the trenches,” she said.

Echandy says she wants to see a more fair system for distributing resources, on issues “as simple as me having to buy the materials that are missing in my science kits and putting the money myself."

Echandy wasn’t the only teacher who appreciated Carranza’s remarks directly to those who spend their time in classrooms. Valerie Green-Thomas is an educator at M.S. 390 in the South Bronx. She said she believes Carranza when he said he was speaking from his heart as a former teacher.

"Today, I am more convinced that we are moving forward in terms of equity, only because he is a part of us, and whatever he said in there as teachers, we could connect."

Green-Thomas appreciated Carranza’s mention of equity in schools, but said she’ll be watching to see if her students in the South Bronx that students get at specialized schools like Stuyvesant.

Critics say that the admissions test to specialized schools like Stuyvesant favors white and Asian students, and that Mayor de Blasio hasn’t done enough to address racial bias in the test-based admissions policy.

Across the city, the mayor’s “Equity and Excellence” education agenda has made only slight progress in closing a persistent achievement gap between white and Asian students on one end, and black and Latino students on the other.