'Inept and Corrupt'
An ex-Brooklyn school superintendent has raked in $224,000 as a consultant in NYC while working top jobs in Connecticut and New Jersey, where he faces accusations of fiscal malfeasance and fraud.
A former Brooklyn school superintendent who left for jobs in Connecticut and New Jersey still collected nearly $224,000 from NYC as a consultant – raking in payments even after the Hackensack, N.J., school district suspended and sued him for alleged fraud and mismanagement.
Thomas McBryde Jr., who left NYC in 2021, faces a bombshell lawsuit by the Hackensack Board of Education. It accuses him of carrying out “an organized plot” to give no-bid contracts to vendors and pay them for services they did not provide.
After Hackensack abruptly removed McBryde in June 2025, his private McBryde Consulting Group LLC continued to receive payments totaling $100,499 from the NYC Department of Education through June 2026, public records show.
McBryde’s moonlighting – never publicly revealed before – calls for scrutiny by both Hackensack and NYC.
“It’s further evidence that the DOE procurement system is inept and even corrupt,” said Eric Nadelstern, a deputy chancellor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “It needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up.”
The revelations come as NYC schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels awaits a report by the city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation on his role in contract violations while superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3 schools, and why he let his deputy take the blame, leaving his own record untainted.
Before and since his election, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised to end the lucrative gigs for consultants and cronies who feed off the massive DOE operating budget, now set at $38 billion for FY 2027.
“This is the type of questionable contract the mayor said he’d target during the campaign – especially in a case where the contractor has been accused of mismanagement,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, who often critiques the DOE.
“The public should know what value is provided by such a murky transaction with a tainted provider.”
McBryde did not answer messages sent to his Hackensack schools email address and Linkedin page.
Schools in Brooklyn’s District 19, where McBryde served as superintendent from 2016 to 2021, hired him as a consultant with the blessing of the current superintendent, Tamra Collins, whistleblowers say. McBryde has supported Collins’ career.
McBryde Consulting Group LLC collected 71 payments totaling $223,923.98 from NYC schools starting in October 2022, data posted on Checkbook NYC show.
None of the payments, except one for $15,000, exceeded $5,000, but some dates show two or three identical payments on the same day – apparently splitting the bill for the same gig.
In the DOE, outside services costing up to $25,000 do not require competitive bids, only the principal’s approval.
Collins did not reply to a request for comment.
DOE officials would not answer my questions about McBryde, including what type of consulting he did, who hired him, and why they continued to pay him for a year after Hackensack accused him of malfeasance.
A DOE spokesperson said only, “We are looking into this.”
The Hackensack lawsuit accuses McBryde of “misrepresenting and lying” to the board and individual members about fiscal and personnel matters. It says he secretly managed the finances with business administrator Lydia Singh, also named in the suit.
McBryde created more than 40 new positions and hired employees to fill them, costing nearly $7 million in salary and health benefits that “the district could not afford,” the lawsuit states. He also drained reserves to pay for operations, leaving the district “in a perilous situation.”
His “recklessness” left the 5,500-student district, which runs six schools in the Bergen County seat, with a $17 million deficit, 11.3% of the Hackensack school budget, officials said. The shortfall required dozens of layoffs and use of emergency funds to make ends meet.
In June 2025, the board abruptly removed McBryde halfway through his three-year contract, putting him on “administrative leave.” His annual salary: $263,000.
It’s unknown whether Hackensack officials knew that McBryde had side gigs as a consultant. Board of Education president Jennifer Harris and lawyer Jason Nunnermacker did not respond to my calls or emails.
But Albania Martinez-Bojos, a parent and PTA president at Hackensack’s Fairmount Elementary school when McBryde was suspended, was unaware of the superintendent’s side hustle.
“That’s news to me. I never heard of that before,” she told me.
“If he had a full-time job as superintendent, when did he have time to do anything else? It sounds like a lot to handle.”
McBryde has jumped from job to job in the past five years.
After leaving NYC in August 2021 as District 19 superintendent, he spent two years and five months as Deputy Superintendent of Excellence, Equity and Inclusion at Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut. Norwalk superintendent Alexandra Estrella hired McBryde, who was her deputy when she served as Manhattan’s District 4 superintendent.
McBryde then took the top job in Hackensack in December 2023.
He lists his business address at a small house in Linden, N.J. , about 25 miles south of Hackensack.
Excellent investigative digging! I was Deputy Chief Investigator for Ed Stancik and Richard Condon. I am happy to see that you are still exposing the endless well of corruption, fraud, and conflicts of interest that permeates the DOE.
The beginning of a very large iceberg, the longer Mamdani waits the worse it becomes… the odor of corruption is fouling the entire school system … the NYPD may have to purchase more handcuffs…