Early childhood workers are accusing a top deputy of Schools Chancellor David Banks of “deliberately misleading” the City Council under oath.
Kara Ahmed, deputy chancellor of early childhood education, testified at a City Council committee meeting Wednesday that hundreds of social workers and instructional coordinators who had received notices of their ouster in early September “are still in their role.”
“The expectation is that everyone is continuing in their role, in their work, just as they left school on June 30,” Ahmed assured.
But the next morning their status in the DOE personnel system changed to “excessed” — meaning let go from their current positions and were free to apply for other jobs in the DOE while remaining on the city payroll, staffers told The Post.
“We are back in the office with our colleagues and no one has spoken to us,” an instructional coordinator said. “So we have absolutely no idea what to do.”
Ahmed, who oversees child care and pre-K programs, never used the term “excess” in her testimony or under grilling by Council members, witnesses said.
“She avoided the word,” a staffer told The Post. “She skirted the truth. She was deliberately misleading.”
Councilman Shekar Krishnan specifically asked Ahmed about the social workers and instructional coordinators: “So I’d like to understand exactly what happened there. Why were they excessed?”
Ahmed replied: “So let me just clarify, no one is out of their position. … All instructional coordinators are still in their roles, they will remain in their roles until any other next steps are happening. … Nobody has been moved out.”
Krishnan said, “What I’m hearing from [employees] is the exact opposite. They don’t know where they are going to be placed. They want to get back to the classrooms.”
On Sept. 6, nearly 400 early childhood social workers and instructional coordinators received excess notices — but after an article appeared in the nonprofit news site Chalkbeat, they were told to continue doing their work. While in limbo, they were blocked from applying for other DOE openings.
That block lifted the morning after the Council hearing, staffers said.
First Deputy Chancellor Daniel Weisberg told The Post last month that the 400 staffers were excessed under a reorganization in which instructional coordinators would work with supervisors instead of teachers, and social workers would go to schools that lacked them.
But Ahmed has yet to come up with a redeployment plan: “We have no guidance from central,” a staffer said.
The DOE did not respond to a request for comment.
