Richard Carranza's Last Stand

Mayor de Blasio hired an ''equity warrior'' as schools chancellor. How parental politics-and the pandemic-left him defeated

- By Clare Malone. Photograph by Tania Franco Klein

Richard Carranza wasn’t Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first choice to be the city’s schools chancellor. Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, changed his mind—on live TV, no less—about taking the job at the 11th hour. De Blasio needed a new chancellor fast. With 1.1 million students, the New York City public-school system is the largest in the country, which ostensibly means that the chancellor’s job is influential and prestigious—an opportunity to change the lives of students and be seen on a national stage. You just have to survive the city’s blood-sport politics, play to its many vocal constituencies, and placate the nitpicking local media, all while staying on the right side of your boss, the mayor, who has his own problems. And when, four days after Carvalho’s demurral, on March 5, 2018, it was announced that Carranza—the former superintendent of San Francisco’s and Houston’s schools and a mariachi musician who had serenaded First Lady Chirlane McCray during his interview at Gracie Mansion—had gotten the job, he was up-front about his ambitious agenda to remake the schools on the model of equity. “There is no daylight between Mayor de Blasio and myself in terms of what we believe in, what our aspirations are for the children of New York City,” said Carranza, flanked by his wife and the mayor, at a press conference.