Two high-ranking members of the New York City Council are demanding greater oversight of contracts in the city’s school system, expressing concern about an investigation into the chancellor over his involvement in a $180,000 no-bid deal for foreign language teachers.
The comments followed testimony on Wednesday at a City Hall hearing by Sean Kreyling, the chief executive of Language Learning Network, the company that provided the instructors. He portrayed the chancellor, Kamar Samuels, as a key player in brokering the contract during his previous job running schools on the West Side of Manhattan.
Mr. Kreyling told Council members that Mr. Samuels signed the deal in 2023 and knew about a billing structure intended to bypass the Department of Education’s onerous procurement rules. Mr. Kreyling described the episode as “significant financial malfeasance.”
The testimony by Mr. Kreyling was hastily arranged by Council members on Tuesday night after publication of an article by The New York Times about the investigation. The hearing ratcheted up the pressure on Mr. Samuels just months after Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed him chancellor. Mr. Samuels, who leads the largest school system in the United States, has acknowledged a “lapse in procedure,” adding that his actions were “not for personal gain or to benefit anyone other than our schoolchildren.”
Eric Dinowitz, the chair of the Council’s Committee on Education, called the testimony “deeply troubling” and said it underscored the need for more scrutiny of contracts at the City Department of Education, particularly no-bid contracts.
He said that he was concerned about the proliferation of deals under $25,000, which receive the least oversight within the department. The deal with Language Learning Network was structured so that payments would be kept under $25,000 and distributed to two companies tied to it.
“Now, we have more reporting that people in the D.O.E. allegedly engaged in conduct that speaks to the need for the oversight,” Mr. Dinowitz said. “I’m not interested in talking about one individual. That’s not what this is about. This is about a system that has flaws.”
In the city’s vast school system, with a budget exceeding $40 billion, principals and area superintendents have some autonomy to sign contracts and hire providers without involving the central administration. Mr. Dinowitz said that the smaller contracts from schools across the city add up to $386 million.
“In the aggregate, it is a serious amount of money,” he said.
Julie Menin, the Council speaker, said that she had “great concern” about contracts at the Education Department, which total more than $12 billion annually.
For nearly two months, Ms. Menin had been seeking detailed information about hundreds of contracts at the Education Department, including no-bid deals, according to a letter sent this month to Mr. Samuels and obtained by The Times.
The Education Department did not provide all of the information by her deadline this month, and she told Mr. Samuels this week that the response had been inadequate. The department provided no copies of contracts.
“This is an alarming lack of transparency,” Ms. Menin wrote to Mr. Samuels.
In recent days, the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation, an independent watchdog that examines wrongdoing and misconduct at the Education Department, opened an investigation into Mr. Samuels over the contract.
When he was the superintendent of schools on the West Side, he signed the $180,000 contract for foreign language instructors before the 2023-24 school year. The contract was renewed the next year and signed by his deputy superintendent, Mariela Graham.
The Special Commissioner of Investigation received a whistle-blower complaint last year that one of the instructors provided by Language Learning Network had been barred from working in city schools. That teacher had been investigated in 2014 over allegations that he had made inappropriate comments toward students and touched a student’s stomach. (Mr. Kreyling said he had not known about the allegations and fired the teacher.)
The complaint led to an investigation of Ms. Graham and the contract renewal, which had divided the payments into smaller amounts. Investigators found that Ms. Graham had arranged the payment plan and had “exhibited astoundingly poor judgment.” Investigators recommended that she be fired.
Ms. Graham has not responded to messages seeking comment. At the hearing on Wednesday, Phil Wong, a council member, said that Ms. Graham had been promoted to a senior role in the Education Department.
The Special Commissioner of Investigation did not investigate Mr. Samuels as part of the earlier investigation but said this week that the new inquiry was a result of “new allegations.” Mr. Mamdani said on Wednesday that he took the investigation seriously but that he still had confidence in the chancellor’s leadership.
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