Adams must reverse golden parachute for crooked Queens director

What should happen to a principal who can’t raise kids but cheats to pretend he can? In New York City, he gets a happy handshake and a $1.8 million payday.

This is the latest from the compost heap posing as the city’s Department of Education – what It took two years to boot the former principal of Maspeth High School, Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir for the tremendously inflating graduation rates. Then it turned around and gave him a seven-year benefice worth nearly $260,000 annually, excluding step increases, an annuity and lifetime health insurance.

Maybe crime doesn’t pay, but cheating does Ministry of Education sure can.

According to the newspaper’s Susan Edelman, Abdul-Mutakabbir’s soft landing does not appear to be a job. She first reported on the Maspeth scandal in 2019, then followed it for years with official delay and finally pulled out the latest damning details.

In total, Abdul-Mutakabbir Maspeth teachers and staff were tricked into graduating patently unqualified students, at one point reporting an abysmal 99% completion rate. This should have been an emergency flare, but no such luck – because as we’ll see, nobody cared.

A report prepared by the DOE’s investigating officer quoted Abdul-Mutakabbir’s operating philosophy: “I don’t care if a child shows up at 7:44 and you leave at 7:45, it’s your job to give credit to that child. “

Add to that basically worthless diplomas — which Abdul-Mutakabbir also acknowledged: Kids can “have fun working at Taco Bell,” according to the report.

Shockingly, Abdul-Mutakabbir’s behavior is not the main scandal here. What happened next was worse.

It was two long years before Abdul-Mutakabbir was fired – if what happened to him can be described as a sacking – and the message sent by the delay is at least as egregious as the scandal itself: do yours Best and relax, because kids don’t count — and in the end, New York’s vile public education culture will protect its own.

Abdul-Mutakabbir’s punishment, if you can call it that, is that he will never again be the principal of the New York school system. But by age 47 he’ll have a desk, a regular paycheck, vacations and vacations, followed by a pension and perks at 55 – but he won’t seem to have to do any actual work.

For some people that would be a win-win, but whatever it is, it’s certainly not a deterrent. Other Department of Education drones now scheming and cheating have certainly taken notice.

Why not? The potential loot is plentiful, and the risk—now broadcasting louder than ever—is minimal.

What a racket, right?

Department of Education to spend $38 billion in school year ending June; No big city system spends more per student — and the results range from dismal to affirmatively destructive to tens of thousands of New York’s most vulnerable children.

With enrollments plummeting — from 1.1 million three years ago to 940,000 — and a chronic truancy rate that’s risen to 40% after eight years at the hands of Mayor Bill de Blasio and his hacker pseudo-administrators, the system might well to have fallen into final decline.

Certainly its primary focus is not on children’s education — student performance standards that have been shaky in recent years are fading away — but rather on raising wages, pensions, and perks for the 100,000-plus employees of the DOE and its myriad, parasitic, non-profit affiliates .

Nominal control of the schools rests with City Hall, at least until that government agency expires in June, but department unions have had a tight grip on the system for decades. This is evidenced by the golden parachute of Abdul-Mutakabbir.

So Mayor Eric Adams has about six weeks to convince the union-dominated legislature to renew school governance. can he do it And what will he do with formal authority if he keeps it?

Reclaiming Abdul-Mutakabbir’s big payday would be a good way to demonstrate that he intends to fight for public education. And making an example of those responsible wouldn’t hurt either.

If that’s not possible — or if Adams doesn’t have the guts to try — well, what’s the point of mayoral control?

That is, if a mayor cannot win small battles that matter, what hope is there when the big battles begin – as they inevitably will?

The Abdul Mutakabbir settlement is a deeply symbolic insult to New York City, its taxpayers and—most importantly—its children. It is significant far beyond its details.

If Eric Adams and his school’s chancellor, David Banks, can live with that, then they can live with anything — and that’s terrible news for a new mayor.

Email: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc