The U.S. Education Department has opened an investigation into the New York City Department of Education’s handling of sexual misconduct cases in its schools, the latest action by the Trump administration against the largest school system in the country.
While the agency on Tuesday announced that its Office for Civil Rights will investigate allegations of sexual abuse by school employees against students in eight states, the department singled out its probe in New York City. Federal officials said they would review allegations that the district had fostered a “systemic and disturbing pattern of enabling abuse” and allowed educators accused of misconduct to keep their jobs. The department did not disclose the source of the allegations.
Kimberly Richey, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, said on Tuesday on WABC’s “Cats and Cosby” radio show that there had been nearly 2,000 cases of sexual abuse against students by employees in the city’s schools.
But that claim appears to be a misreading of a recent report by The 74, an education news outlet, which found that there had been 1,973 recent lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by school personnel over decades across New York State, including at private and Catholic schools.
Nicole Brownstein, a spokeswoman at the city’s Department of Education, said that the school system took “allegations of abuse very seriously.”
“Every student deserves to be safe in school and every staff member must be held to the highest standards,” Ms. Brownstein said in a statement. “If an allegation arises, we immediately take steps to provide support for the student, refer the case to the appropriate investigatory body, and pursue disciplinary action.”
School districts across the country have long been accused of letting educators who face allegations of wrongdoing quietly resign or retire without alerting the authorities or marking their personnel files, allowing them to pursue work in other school systems. The practice is known in education circles as “passing the trash.”
The investigation marked the latest clash between the Trump administration and the New York City school system, which has 884,000 students in 3-K through 12th grade and about 75,000 teachers. Ms. Richey noted that the investigation could lead to penalties that include the withdrawal of federal funding. About $2.3 billion of the school system’s budget, or about 5 percent, comes from the federal government.
“Are they handling these complaints appropriately?” Ms. Richey said on the radio show. “Are they doing what they’re legally required to do to protect students in New York City public schools? That is part of what we’re going to uncover.”
On Tuesday, the department also announced similar investigations in school districts in California, Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia. They focus on possible violations of Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in educational programs funded by the federal government.
In New York City public schools, allegations of sexual misconduct and wrongdoing by school employees against students are investigated by an independent law enforcement agency, the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation.
Every year, the agency receives about 10,000 complaints, including for financial fraud, waste and abuse, but many of them are not investigated because some are unsubstantiated and others do not fall under the office’s purview and are referred to the Department of Education or other agencies.
From 2020 through 2025, investigators looked into about 900 cases of sexual misconduct by school employees and substantiated allegations in nearly 300 of them, according to the agency’s records. Investigators often refer cases to prosecutors for criminal charges and, in a majority of sexual misconduct cases, make recommendations to school administrators to terminate the employees.
In New York City and elsewhere, school employees under investigation sometimes resign before a review has been completed and before they could face disciplinary action. In some cases, the Department of Education has reassigned employees found culpable of wrongdoing and not terminated them despite recommendations by investigators.
The federal Education Department opened another civil rights investigation of New York City’s school in April, saying it was looking into the teachings of a group known as N.Y.C. Educators for Palestine. The school system said the group was not affiliated with it. A year ago, the Trump administration withheld more than $35 million in grants from the city’s magnet schools, an action that a judge later ruled was improper.
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