By Gus Saltonstall
Kamar Samuels, who has led schools on the Upper West Side and in Morningside Heights since 2022, will now oversee the entire New York City public school system as the new Schools Chancellor under Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani announced the appointment last week, making Samuels the leader of the largest public school system in the United States.
Samuels has most recently overseen School District 3, which includes 29 schools and stretches from 59th to 122nd streets, and goes west to the Hudson River and east to Fifth Avenue above Central Park North. Previously, he served as the leader of School District 13 in Brooklyn, and began his career as a teacher in the Bronx, before becoming a principal, and then a deputy superintendent in Brownsville.
This is how The New York Times described Samuel’s reputation: “He is best known in New York for his efforts to promote desegregation, including through merging schools in Manhattan and central Brooklyn. He also looked to international baccalaureate programs — known for their academic rigor and focus on philosophical thinking — as a replacement for traditional gifted and talented programs.”
West Side Rag interviewed Samuels in December of 2023 and asked him a variety of questions about his stances on different elements of the superintendent job.
Here is an excerpt from our piece about his main priorities at the time.
WSR: Looking at the bigger picture, what are your main priorities as superintendent of District 3?
Kamar Samuels: “Number one, I think of the chancellor’s priorities, the most impactful one for us being New York City Reads, which is a thoughtful approach to reading instruction, and making sure we implement those policies.
Another priority is making sure we welcome and set up platforms to educate our newest New Yorkers [asylum seekers], and we’re working with our schools to make sure that happens.
We’ve also been dealing with an enrollment challenge. Prior to the influx of new New Yorkers, some of our schools have had significant decreases, so we are engaging parents about how they make decisions for middle school, and how we can…programmatically and structurally address some of the enrollment concerns.
The position is called “Community Superintendent” for a reason, the community comes before the superintendent. So, you’re not strong in the position, no matter where you are in the city, unless you are able to tap in and really have a deep understanding of your community.”
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
The enrollment issues are clearly linked to this “academic rigor” that he’s promoting (alongside “reading instruction”). People just can’t handle tough standards anymore, right?
Finally someone with an unrelenting focus on excellence to put things right.
When Mayor Adams left it up to each district to decide whether or not to bring back academic screening (tests, for example) in middle schools, he held mandated “parent listening sessions” in which parents were overwhelmingly pro-screening. Surveys were also filled out, and they showed parents were overwhelmingly pro-screening. And then he decided not to allow screening. So his mind was made up beforehand and he didn’t bother listening to what parents in his district wanted at all.
Not sure what “academic rigor” means to him, but I assume it’s all talk. I truly hope I’m wrong.
He’s another “progressive” who is intent on lowering standards to achieve “equity”.
Holding back advanced and hard-working students by eliminating the gifted and talented program will not be in anyone’s interest and it will not achieve “equity”.
If Samuels gets his way there will be a stampede of middle class families out of the city.
This. Super grateful that we already started the application process out of our public school this fall
Didn’t they already make their exodus following Mamdani’s election? Or was that the upper-class set who fled? Gosh, the streets feel so empty now….
Wanting to lower standards and dumb-down education isn’t something you should be fighting for…..
Snicker all you want, as it is your normal response, but for families with children in public school, Samuels is a disaster.
So he played a prominent role in the dumbing down of our collapsing public education system? Good to know he’s now in charge of the whole system.
Good luck to the gifted and talented and charter school kids, they’ll need it. A $42.8 Billion dollar budget and only 29% of eighth graders are reading proficient. Thats not even as bad as their math proficiency- only 23%! Disgraceful.
Another reason to home school your kids…
no thoughts from UWS Dad?
Thanks for checking, but no comment from me. I have no particular knowledge of Mr. Samuels approach to the position; I realize that’s not stopping others on here from speculating but I’m trying to be the change I want to see =)
The vast majority of urbanists only care for kids as tokens to further their agenda!
What a bizarre assertion … I can assure you I care deeply about making sure kids don’t get run over by reckless drivers and get to experience the amazing benefits of growing up in a big city like NYC
We need vouchers and more charter schools. Obviously what we have now is barely working.
Just wait until you dig into Cea Weaver. NYC is headed to crazy town.
Why are the viewpoints in the comments section always so consistently conservative and trolly?
“Here’s another liberal trying to make things work better for more people” — eye roll.
“Here’s another conservative trying to make things better for fewer people” — applause.
I get selfishness but, like, it seems to not really work out so great as policy?
Can’t really complain that the kids are dumb when you don’t want the kids to get an education via the tax dollars necessary for said education — unless it’s homeschooling that you yourself administer to your own kids…cha-ching!
I wonder if some homeschooled conservatives who live on the UWS will chime in soon.
Kansas City School experiment proved throwing more money at educational problems doesn’t guarantee better results.
With all due respect, the city spends $46K per each kid in public school, why isn’t that enough? Catholic schools charge $6-10K per kids, and suburban schools spend less than $20K per kid.
What one person might call “making things better for more people” those of us who’ve had kids in the system and care about their education might call “reducing standards and eliminating opportunities for kids to excel.” We want the kids to get a better education via our tax dollars, not none at all. I’ve no idea why you would say that.
I honestly think that the powers that be do not really want kids educated in NYC! They would be intent to have young professions in this city with no working class who come here to get knocked up and move to the suburbs while all the UFT members collect nice salaries in rubber rooms spreading gossip about each other.
Reasonable assessment.
Bring back tests, rigorous courses, and gifted and talented programs.
According to liberals,that’s racist.
Chronic absenteeism of students needs to be addressed.
Chronic absenteeism of parents is the thing that needs to be addressed first. The other is just a consequence.
We received a city wide e mail of Samuels introducing himself by ChatGpt generated, unedited (you know those horizontal slashes) regurgitation of terms like “inclusion”, “multiculturalism”, and “diversity”. Do we even know what those words mean in a real data driven way? More of the same jibber jabber we have been getting while our children can’t read, write or count. We need to have more evidence of what these people have actually accomplished. Working in a The Bronx is not accomplishment, becoming a superintendent in an environment where who you know is more important than ever, is not an accomplishment. What progress, good outcomes has this man created. Where are the success stories that would show he is more than wordsalad.
That means A) whoever drafted the letter didn’t know how to so just used AI, and B) when he reviewed the letter he didn’t know better either.
And he is the person overseeing the biggest school system in the nation.
I think it says a lot (good) about our new mayor that he is choosing smart, experienced people in positions that he himself knows he has little or no personal experience in. In other words, he is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, and to choose people who do. Bravo.
“Smart, experienced people”?
https://nypost.com/2026/01/03/us-news/mamdani-schools-chancellor-pick-an-idiot-and-ideologue-source/
In fairness, if you have special needs, you are better off sending them to NYC public schools than schools out in the suburbs.
Put differently, we are so grateful that he’s not automatically choosing stupid, inexperienced people for positions that he himself knows he has little or no personal experience in – which would be every single possible position, since he has zero experience in any field and has never held or shown up for a job. In other words yet, he thinks he is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, which is truly unknowable, since to know something you need to have done a bit and learned what is knowable and what is unknowable, in order to know how to choose people who do.
Bravo, indeed.
There will be less learning and more equity!
Learing?
District 3 will flourish under his watch. But district 3, also has to work with him. He can’t do it all alone.
Gifted and talented program is really not challenging. Kids are all gifted and talented. They just have their moments when it’s realized every kid learn on their pace. Every kid is gifted and talented.. the gifted and talented kids they think they privileged and they’re not, they eat they play they get hurt they learn all together with everybody else even with the special ed kids.
Well, good luck to you when you get a surgeon who went through such schooling.
I was a JHS teacher in the 70’s when “gifted and talented” programs were introduced. They didn’t offer “academic rigor”. They were originally intended to serve a rather small number of students who were not doing well in traditional classrooms: smart kids who needed alternative curricula to thrive. This was in the era of tracked classes, with plentiful academically rigorous honors classes for students who were smart and hardworking and did very well with challenging material. Within a few years, parents of honors students began to insist that their children were certainly gifted and talented, and were being denied what they thought of as a higher-tiered program. That was a misperception, but it worked, and it changed the nature of “gifted and talented” classes.