CHANCELLOR COVER-UP
NYC school investigators castigated an Upper Manhattan deputy superintendent for violating contract and procurement rules, but let Kamar Samuels off the hook for doing the same thing.
Schools chancellor Kamar Samuels got a free pass from city investigators who blasted his former deputy superintendent for violating Department of Education procurement rules — but failed to reveal that Samuels engaged in the same alleged misconduct, records show.
Anastasia Coleman, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, issued a report last June charging that Mariela Graham, the deputy superintendent in Upper Manhattan’s school District 3, improperly signed a $180,000 contract with a non-DOE vendor in 2024.
Graham also “conspired with the vendor” to split $360,000 in billings to circumvent a $25,000-per-school limit on non-DOE vendors, the report says.
“It is inconceivable that Graham should continue to be employed by the DOE in any capacity,” Coleman concluded, citing the administrator’s “astoundingly poor judgment” and violation of rules meant to prevent “such financial malfeasance.”
But SCI did not disclose that Samuels, when he served as District 3 superintendent, signed a prior $180,000 contract with the same vendor in 2023 – and allowed the improper bill-splitting to avoid triggering a required DOE review, records show.
That’s how a flawed report by the NYC agency charged with exposing fraud and corruption in city schools left Samuels untainted in the months before Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed him chancellor.
“How did Mayor Mamdani pick a chancellor who casually violates procurement rules and, even worse, induces his subordinates to do so on his behalf?” a DOE official asked in amazement.
Asked Friday, May 29, whether Mamdani knew about the damning SCI report before appointing Samuels, a City Hall spokesperson did not respond, but told The New York Post, “The administration was unaware of this, and we are looking into it.”
The SCI report, which the agency released under the Freedom of Information Law, focuses on Graham’s dealings with Sean Kreyling, a non-DOE vendor who owns two companies: Kreyco, doing business as Language Learning Network (LLN), which supplies teachers; and Reimagine Education Group (REG,) which runs teacher training.
The report makes a blatantly false and misleading statement.
It says: “Graham signed a contract with LLN for $180,000 to provide Spanish teachers in local schools for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.”
In fact, Samuels signed a $180,000 contract with LLN on June 30, 2023 for the 2023-2024 school year, records show: The SCI did not mention it.
Graham signed a second $180,000 agreement with LLN on Aug. 22, 2024 for the 2024-2025 school year:
The second contract noted the district “ACKNOWLEDGES AND AGREES THAT ITS GOVERNING BOARD HAS REVIEWED AND APPROVED THIS AGREEMENT IN ITS ENTIRETY AND THAT THE SIGNATORY BELOW HAS THE AUTHORITY AND EXPRESS PERMISSION TO EXECUTE THIS AGREEMENT ON DISTRICT’S BEHALF.”
The “governing board” apparently refers to the Panel for Educational Policy, which reviews and approves DOE contracts. The PEP never saw it, an insider said.
The DOE requires that any vendor seeking payment for more than $25,000 in services to an individual school be entered in its Multiple Task Award Contract (MTAC) system after an approval process.
Emails supplied by Kreyling show that both Samuels and Graham allowed the bill-splitting that SCI says violated DOE rules. They both allowed Kreyling to bill up to $25,000 for each of his two companies, LLN and REG, which had separate vendor ID numbers.
In an email Samuels wrote to Kreyling on Sept. 5, 2023, Samuels indicated he went along with the plan:
Samuels wrote: “It is my understanding that you do not have an MTAC and cannot provide services beyond $25,000 each for two vendor IDs listed below. So the total amount for the work is $50,000?”
That email does not appear in the SCI report, but others do, in part.
The report cites a June 21, 2024 email from Kreyling addressed to Mariela – but CC’d to Samuels.
“Hi Mariela,” it starts. “I am sharing the billing breakdown for the 23-24 SY below. Because we have two organizations, we can bill each school a maximum of $50,000. We hope to be awarded an MTAC soon and will update you accordingly.”
SCI does not include the entire email. It shows how Kreyling’s two companies would each bill four schools $15,000 to $20,000 —falling under the $25,000 limit requiring DOE approval. But the charges for each school totaled $40,000 to $50,000 — exceeding the limit.
The SCI report omits the CC to Samuels, which showed he received the bill-splitting breakdown.
The watchdog agency, which has previously cited DOE principals for bill-splitting, excoriates Graham in urging her ouster.
“Graham exhibited astoundingly poor judgment on multiple occasions and completely ignored (contracts and purchasing) rules designed to ensure fair and transparent business dealings between the DOE and outside vendors,” Coleman concludes.
Graham “violated several rules intended to create a fair bidding process” by entering into the contract with Kreyling “without the approval of any of the required DOE officials.”
Graham, it adds, engaged in “a conspiracy to hide the contract details from the DOE through improper bill splitting designed to avoid exceeding the thresholds put in place specifically to protect the DOE and the public from such financial malfeasance.”
SCI sent the June 11, 2025 report to then-Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, calling on the DOE to fire Graham and attach a “problem code” to her personnel file to block any future employment.
“In response, DOE indicated that they would seek termination of her employment,” SCI spokeswoman Anna Correa confirmed.
That never happened. Instead, the DOE gave Graham a slap on the wrist – and a big promotion.
The DOE suspended Graham without pay for two weeks, then reinstated her “based on the facts and circumstances” of the case, a DOE spokesperson said.
This month, Samuels quietly appointed Graham his “senior director of strategy.” She will join him at Tweed, DOE’s downtown headquarters.
The DOE refused to disclose any change in Graham’s salary, which last was $225,571.
“This individual has a long track record of success in supporting students at both the school and district levels, cooperated fully with the investigation and was appropriately held accountable,” DOE spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein said.
Graham has worked more than 23 years in the DOE, including 10 years as founding principal of the Urban Assembly School for Leadership and Empowerment, an all-girls, grades 6-12 school in Brooklyn.
The SCI defended its report, saying the agency investigated only the 2024 contract signed by Graham.
“Prior contracts with the vendor were not the subject of this investigation,” SCI First Deputy Commissioner Daniel Schlachet said.
The SCI also focused on “LLN billing practices,” he said.
Half the LLN billings occurred under the 2023-2024 contract signed by Samuels, but that contract “was never raised” by Graham or Kreyling, Schlachet said.
“Neither Graham nor Kreyling at any point during their interviews indicated that there was any potential wrongdoing by Samuels.
“In fact, it was Samuels who terminated the agreement with LLN in March 2025, over the objections of Kreyling,” he added.
Without giving a reason, Samuels abruptly cancelled his contract with LLN for Spanish classes on March 14, 2025, three months before the end of the school year —and two days after SCI investigator Philip Sansone emailed Kreyling that he was “conducting a confidential investigation.”
Schlachet dismissed revelations that Samuels signed the first contract and permitted the bill-splitting that occurred during two school years, calling the omissions “not relevant.”
“The fact that Kreyling now provides you with information that he did not provide to SCI during his less-than-cooperative interview with SCI investigators is not relevant to our findings referred to DOE in June 2025,” Schlachet wrote, “and SCI stands by those findings.”
Schlachet denied a cover-up: “I will remind you that our report and findings regarding this matter were referred to then-Chancellor Aviles-Ramos weeks before the 2025 NYC mayoral primary took place last June, obviously before Mamdani won the general election in November, and well before Samuels was on anyone’s radar as a potential candidate for the chancellor position.”
Asked if SCI would now investigate Samuels’ involvement in procurement violations, Schlachet put the onus on Kreyling.
“If the vendor would like now to introduce evidence he did not provide to SCI during the course of our investigation last year, he should do so. If and when he does, SCI will take that newly disclosed information under advisement.”
Kreyling told me he had one meeting with two SCI investigators who “yelled at me” and did not ask to see his contracts, only his invoices and documentation of his teacher training, which he provided.
“Once they got what they requested, they never contacted us again,” he said.
Kreyling said he’d never worked in NYC public schools before. He insists the bill-splitting was not his idea, but recommended to him by a District 3 administrator who sent him the contract signed by Samuels.
“My understanding was that this was just typical business as usual,” he said.
Kreyling plans to sue the DOE. He sent a letter to Samuels on April 1, 2025, saying District 3 owed him $186,670. The sum covers remaining balances on the district’s second $180,000 contract and another $80,000 contract with PS 149 Sojourner Truth, which Principal Delouise Briggs signed with Kreyling on Aug. 4, 2023 for French classes. It also includes late fees, interest, and $90,000 for an alleged contract violation after a principal tried to poach one of his Spanish teachers.
Kreyling said he will also sue the SCI, which recommended that the DOE terminate all contracts with any entity associated with him, and bar any future business with him.
“Their report demonstrates utter incompetence and impropriety,” he said. “They have maligned us with lies.”
According to the SCI report, the probe began in January 2025 when a district administrator discovered that Ralph (aka Rafael) F. Franco, one of the Spanish teachers hired by Kreyling, had “retired irrevocably” from the DOE in 2015 after SCI found he “behaved inappropriately” with a 15-year-old male student at Kingsborough Early College Secondary School in Brooklyn. The alleged misconduct included asking the teen to lift his shirt to show his stomach, and whispering in his ear, “You’re a very cute Mexican.”
Franco had a problem code attached to his file to bar him from future work in DOE schools.
Kreyling was unaware of Franco’s DOE history, he said, but replaced him in a District 3 school after officials revealed the allegation.
Franco maintains a New York state license to teach Spanish in grades 7 to 12.
The Golden Rule—He who has the gold, makes the rules.
What vetting process do these contracts ostensibly for $25K and under but actually for much larger amounts actually go through, in terms of privacy, propriety, data security, etc. etc.? And why are DOE officials so eager to bend the rules?