Silicon Valley tech firm that hired failed NYC schools chancellor profited from the pandemic

  

NY Post 

The California ed-tech firm that hired ex-schools Chancellor Richard Carranza cashed in on the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC, reaping millions of dollars from the Department of Education under his reign, records show.

IXL Learning, Inc. — which named Carranza its chief of strategy and global development — has been paid $3.3 million by the DOE in the past two years alone. 

The Silicon Valley outfit has collected $2.1 million in NYC taxpayer funds this school year. That nearly doubled the $1.2 million it made last school year as the DOE expanded remote instruction, according to records compiled by the city comptroller’s office.

Observers expect IXL’s windfall to grow with Carranza as its salesman.

He “brings to the table a wealth of contacts and people who owe him favors” in New York, Houston and San Francisco, where he has led school districts, said Alina Adams, a Manhattan mom and writer who runs the website “NYC School Secrets: Parents Helping Parents.”

“Some of the people in charge of deciding whether or not to buy IXL products will be the same people that Carranza hired.”   

Carranza’s new gig as a top executive for a DOE vendor raises serious conflict-of-interest questions.

 Under NYC laws, city employees may not seek jobs — including submit a resume, discuss opportunities, or interview — with a company they are dealing with as part of their city job, the Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) states.

Carranza announced his resignation on Feb. 26, saying he needed time to grieve 11 loved ones lost to COVID-19.  IXL announced his hiring in a press release dated April 1, less than three weeks after his last day as chancellor.

 

Richard Carranza is done ruining city schools

 

Patch 

The leader of New York City's school system will step down amid the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing struggles to achieve equity in classrooms.

Chancellor Richard Carranza announced his resignation Friday after three years. He sat alongside Mayor Bill de Blasio and ticked off accomplishments in dismantling structures and policies of entrenched racism in the school system.

"I'm proud of what we've accomplished over the last three years," Carranza said.

Carranza cited the need to grieve many close to him who died during the coronavirus pandemic as his reason to leave.

"Make no mistake - I am a New Yorker, not by birth but by choice," he said, becoming visibly emotional. "A New Yorker who has lost 11 family members and close childhood friends to this pandemic. A New Yorker who needs to take time to grieve."

Meisha Ross Porter, a Bronx native who now leads its schools, will succeed Carranza. She will be the first Black woman to lead the city's school system — the largest in the country.

"An African American woman will take the helm of the nation's greatest public school system," de Blasio said.

Porter has a long career within the city's schools. She said she'll never forget her own experience in classrooms and as a principal.

"I'm ready to hit the ground running and leave New York City schools to full recovery," she said.

The New York Times first reported Carranza's resignation and highlighted growing tensions between him and de Blasio over integrating schools.

Carranza and de Blasio during their appearance together lavished warm praise on each other. But when asked point blank about reported differences over selective admissions programs and gifted and talented, Carranza largely sidestepped the question.

Instead, Carranza highlighted de Blasio's broad commitment to achieving equity in schools starting with the mayor's push for universal 3-K and pre-K.

Remember Remember the 7th of December...

 

PIX News 

 New York City school buildings will reopen under a phased schedule beginning the second week of December, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday.

Students in grades K-5, 3-K, and pre-kindergarten will return to the classroom first on Dec. 7, de Blasio said. Students in D75 schools at all grade levels will return to in-person learning on Dec. 10.

However, all schools located in orange and red microcluster zones will have to follow the state's guidance in order to reopen.

The mayor said the city will address the future of middle and high schools at a later date. For now, those students will continue with remote learning.

Students will not be allowed to return to in-person classes unless a signed COVID-19 testing consent form has been submitted by a parent or guardian, according to de Blasio. Families can fill out and submit a consent form by visiting, mystudent.nyc.

Additionally, the Department of Education is moving toward having students whose parents chose in-person learning be in the classroom five days a week. De Blasio said some schools are prepared to offer full-time in-person learning as early as Dec. 7, but other schools will need more time to ramp up.

The update comes more than a week after de Blasio announced public school buildings would temporarily close as a result of the city's seven-day coronavirus positivity rate reaching the 3% threshold he previously set.

Students pivoted to all-remote learning on Nov. 19, just days before their Thanksgiving holiday break.

As schools prepare to reopen, de Blasio said the city is taking a new approach to monitoring safety moving forward. The city will no longer use the previous citywide 3% positivity rate threshold to determine the fate of schools.

De Blasio said the 3% threshold was very stringent and purposely set at the start of the academic year amid many unanswered questions and concerns about the pandemic's affect on schools, but the city has since proven that it can keep students and staff safe despite a higher positivity rate.

"We feel confident that we can keep schools safe," he said.

 If de Blasio thought the threshold that he mandated for closings was so stringent, why re-open them with city cases at 4% and climbing?

3 is the magic number; schools are closed

 

Gothamist

The city’s public school buildings are slated to temporarily close Thursday, November 19th, and students will be shifted to full remote learning after the seven-day positivity rate reached 3% Wednesday, the threshold Mayor Bill de Blasio has long said would trigger a systemwide closure.

It was not immediately clear how long schools will stay closed.

De Blasio has repeatedly promised schools would close the day the rate got to the 3% seven-day average, calling it part of a “social contract” forged with students, parents and school staff in order to reopen back in September. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza sent an email Wednesday afternoon to school principals and later families announcing the closure.

In the letter to families, Carranza wrote, "Given recent increases in transmission, we have reached a point in our City’s infection rate that requires all students to transition to remote learning. Beginning Thursday, November 19, all school buildings will be closed, and all learning will proceed remotely for all students, until further notice. You will hear from your principal shortly about next steps for you and your student. Please note that this is a temporary closure, and school buildings will reopen as soon as it is safe to do so."

Board of Education comes up way short in daycare services in Holden's district

 

 

Queens Post

Council Member Robert Holden is calling on the city to make good on its promise to offer free daycare to working parents on days their children attend school remotely.

Holden penned a letter to Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza last week, calling on the Department of Education (DOE) to expand the child care program to more schools within his 30th Council district.

He said his office has received complaints from parents who don’t have access to the program known as “Learning Bridges,” which offers free daycare for public school children in 3-K through eighth grade on their remote learning days.

“The communities I represent are filled with essential workers and first-responders who worked hard during this pandemic…” Holden wrote in the Oct. 20 letter. “I find it inconceivable that so many families in my district seemingly have no access to such a critical program like Learning Bridges.”

The Council Member listed six public schools in his district — which covers Middle Village, Maspeth, Glendale, Woodside and Ridgewood — where parents don’t have access to the program. Many are in School District 24, he noted.

77,000

 

 

Gothamist

New York City Public Schools are still lacking 77,000 learning devices like tablets and laptops, nearly a month after classes began, and fewer than 15% of students attending schools in person have consented to getting randomly tested for COVID-19.

These details on the rocky reopening of public schools across the five boroughs came from a long-awaited City Council hearing held by the Education and Health committees on Friday. It was the first such hearing that Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza testified at since schools reopened on a staggered basis beginning on September 21st. Councilmember Mark Treyger, chair of the education committee, was forced to delay the hearing that was originally scheduled on September 29th, the day middle school children were returning to school.

"How many requests are you in receipt of as of this moment for devices and internet as of today?" Treyger asked Department of Education deputy chief operating officer Lauren Siciliano.

"As of this moment we have about 77,000 requests, but again we then go and verify the need for the school so it's a constant evolving number," Siciliano replied.

Data released by the DOE on Thursday showed that schools comprised of more Black and Hispanic students had low student engagement during the spring when they transitioned completely to remote learning. In some cases, the devices are the only way for children to learn given that more than half of the city's one million public school students have opted for remote learning only.

"We engage with the school and to better understand which is a device that is needed in the hands of a student, which is a device that has been requested to replenish supply, and it's not uniform across the entire DOE," said Carranza.

Treyger pointed out that Mayor Bill de Blasio had been saying for weeks that every student who needed a device had gotten one.

"The fact that thousands of our kids, particularly from under-resourced communities still don't have a device is unacceptable and shameful. And I want to lay the fault squarely with the mayor and his office for being in denial about the severity of this issue," he said.

Businesses and schools in Kew Gardens and Far Rockaway will have to shut down for a month because of rise of COVID-19 infections

 

 

NY Daily News

New York City is moving to shut down schools, restaurant dining and nonessential businesses in nine Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods undergoing a surge in COVID-19 cases, Mayor de Blasio said Sunday.

The shutdown — which would mark a significant reversal to the painstaking, months-long process of reopening the city — will start Wednesday pending state approval, he added.

“The goal here is to do everything we can to stop something bigger from happening right now,” Hizzoner said at a press conference.

“It will require sacrifice. We’re talking about people who have been through so much,” he continued. “But it’s something that we believe is necessary to keep this city from going backwards towards where we were months ago.”

The city is targeting nine areas, including predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where cases began to flare up last month. Those include Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Gravesend, Midwood and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, along with Far Rockaway and Kew Gardens in Queens.

If the state approves de Blasio’s plan, students in those areas will be able attend public and private school in person on Monday and Tuesday, but will have to shift to online-only learning starting Wednesday.

“Those two days are going to give us crucial time to make sure students have the devices they need for the remote learning tenure they will have,” said Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza. “They’ll allow us also to communicate with families, to set up schedules for remote learning.”

Both indoor and outdoor dining would be banned, but houses of worship will be allowed to stay open for now.

THE CITY

Most New York City schools haven’t even been open a full week, and already Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans have hit a major setback: He wants to shut down campuses as of Wednesday in nine ZIP codes where coronavirus positivity rates had surpassed a 3% over at least the past seven days.

The closures, which de Blasio announced Sunday, would affect about 100 public schools in Far Rockaway, Southern Brooklyn, and Central Queens neighborhoods. Some 200 private schools in those areas are also slated to close.

Children in closed schools will begin learning remotely on Wednesday, less than a week after all but one district building officially reopened for hybrid learning, a model that allows students to learn in-person one to three days a week in socially distanced classrooms, while learning remotely the rest of the time.

Schools will be allowed to stay open through Tuesday so teachers can help students prepare for fully virtual learning and hand out additional devices, de Blasio said.

That decision immediately prompted outcry from some city lawmakers and educators who wondered why they need to be closed imminently but are safe enough to stay open for the next three days.

The mayor “just announced that it’s NOT safe to go to school in 9 zip codes, but is encouraging kids to get 1 more day inside school before they close,” tweeted Councilman Mark Treyger, who is the chairman of the city council’s education committee.

A month after de Blasio and Carranza roll out school re-opening plan, they then unroll the toilet paper to guage the air from the school vents

 

NY Post

Mayor Bill de Blasio officially presented his school reopening plan Friday — calling for a weekly “blended approach’’ of in-class and online learning for “a vast majority of kids.”

Most students will physically be in class two to three days a week, the mayor said.

“You can certainly say, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be tough, it’s gonna take a lot of work,’ ’’ Hizzoner told reporters in a conference call.

He said the city’s daily positive-test rate for the coronavirus must remain below 3 percent for the plan to work. He said Friday’s figures show it remains steady at 1 percent.

The discovery of a vaccine for the deadly contagion would help bring schools “back to full strength,’’ de Blasio said, referring to all in-school learning.

He said it was “conceivable’’ that schools could fully reopen for on-site instruction without a vaccine if the number of virus cases in the city becomes virtually nonexistent but added that the scenario would be “difficult.’’

Each school’s plan will vary between one to three days of in-student learning, with the rest of the school week remote, depending on such things as its enrollment and layout, city officials said.

NY Post

 The city is going to extremes to make sure this school year doesn’t get flushed.

Department of Education workers have been spotted using pieces of toilet paper stuck to the ends of sticks to gauge the airflow inside classrooms as kids return in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One stunned city councilman exposed the bizarre testing method in all its low-tech glory by posting a tweet Wednesday showing a worker poking at a ceiling vent with bathroom tissue affixed to a flimsy piece of wood using a binder clip.

“The official and comprehensive NYC inter-agency classroom ventilation inspection process,”
Mark Treyger zinged in the post.

When quizzed about the tissue rig, Mayor Bill de Blasio conceded that he wasn’t qualified to issue a “a great technical answer” — but insisted that folks shouldn’t not to diss the Charmin.

“That’s actually the way the CDC recommends you test these things,” he explained.

De Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced this week that the DOE would vet all city school buildings for adequate ventilation to guard against coronavirus transmission.

The pair said that DOE engineers would spearhead the sweep and that the vast majority of schools would be cleared for operation by September 1.

Chancellor Carranza proposes crisis advantage school admission changes and rails against Councilman Holden for being tardy for caring for his ill mother.

 

NY Post

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said he doesn’t have “a nefarious plan” to use the coronavirus crisis to overhaul middle and high school admission policies, but so far he has given no hint of the “tweaks” he has in mind.

Carranza, who was caught on tape last month telling a national group of Latino school leaders, 
“Never waste a good crisis to transform a system,” seemed to back-pedal Thursday while addressing a virtual public meeting of the advisory Panel For Educational Policy.

“We are not planning a nefarious plan to use this pandemic to change policy,” the chancellor said. 
“We know there must be some tweaks to admissions, not permanent changes.”

Adding to the confusion, Mayor de Blasio at a press conference the day before bluntly spoke about using the pandemic to change the “status quo.”

“Many things are going to be reevaluated as a result of this crisis,” he said. “We are not just going to bring New York City back with the status quo that was there before. But we’re going to try to make a series of changes that favor equity and fairness.”

Both Carranza and de Blasio have voiced their disdain for selective “screened schools,” even though their own children attended them.

A DOE spokeswoman had nothing to add on the issue Friday, but parents are buzzing about the possibilities. Among those under discussion:

• A lottery system: This would eliminate all “screens” and accept students randomly, perhaps with priority fo the disadvantaged. This plan would mirror the controversial system in Brooklyn’s District 15, where the middle schools no longer select students based on report-card grades, test scores, or even auditions for performing arts programs. The District 15 lottery sets aside seats for kids from low-income families, those learning English as a new language, and the homeless.
• Use prior test scores: Schools could use scores from the 3rd- and 6th-grade state exams. Schools with a ranking system could simply plug in metrics from the previous year. But it’s not the fairest way to go, parents say, because kids were told that the 4th- and 7th-grade scores counted for admissions and tried harder then.

NY Post

 Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza angrily scolded a City Council member for being late to a virtual public hearing, ignoring the elected official’s explanation that he was tending to his ailing 96-year-old mother.

Carranza’s outburst, which came during a meeting of the advisory Panel for Educational Policy on Thursday, recalled the time he walked out of a Queens district meeting when parents complained their children were physically and sexually assaulted. He later accused the parents of “grandstanding.”

This time, Carranza blew up at Queens lawmaker Robert Holden, who was not logged in to the video meeting when called upon about 7:30 p.m.

“I had a number of issues to handle tonight including my mother in a nursing home fighting for her life and may have COVID,” Holden explained when he was finally called upon two hours later.

 Holden then criticized the chancellor’s recent comment to school leaders — “Never waste a good crisis,” as reported in The Post.

 That comment “was an insult to everyone fighting COVID,” Holden said. “That comment was disgraceful, and he should apologize for it.”

School teachers collectively outraged at Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor "Carranzavirus"

NY Post

One after another, sick Brooklyn Technical High School teachers called union chapter leader Nate Bonheimer last week, to tell him they’d tested positive for COVID-19.
By Friday, five of them had shared the devastating news. But after being notified about each one, the city Department of Education still ordered the 6,000-student school’s 350 staffers to show up for work last week, saying the building had been cleaned.

“The DOE did not close the school for any of the cases,” said Bonheimer, who worries that inaction exposed others to the dreaded infection.

The city failed to follow a March 9 directive by the state Education Department that “requires an initial 24-hour closure, in order to begin an investigation to determine the contacts that the individual may have had within the school environment.”

DOE did not attempt to identify close contacts, Bonheimer said. “They did not alert the people who needed to know the most to protect themselves, their families and everyone else they came into contact with.”

One infected teacher was so torn by the secrecy he took it upon himself to personally let all his students know his condition.

Around the city, teachers and administrators are outraged that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza resisted a drum beat to close the public schools in the name of safety.
Some renamed the coronavirus  “Carranzavirus.”

“You say equity and excellence, but every other school district closed before you did. You had these kids like petri dishes spreading this to their families,” an administrator fumed.

Some DOE employees believe de Blasio and Carranza deliberately kept the lid on the COVID-19 cases popping up, putting kids and families at risk.

“The blood is on their hands,” one said

NY Post
 
A Brooklyn principal has died due to complications from the coronavirus — the first known death of a city public school staffer tied to the pandemic, officials said Monday.

Dezann Romain, 36, led the Brooklyn Democracy Academy in Brownsville, a transfer school that serves students who have dropped out or fallen behind in credits in traditional high school settings.

“It is with profound sadness and overwhelming grief that we announce the passing of our sister, CSA member Dezann Romain, Principal of Brooklyn Democracy Academy, due to complications from Coronavirus,” the union said in a statement.

“Our prayers are with her family and school community as we mourn alongside them. Please keep Principal Romain in your thoughts and continue to do everything possible to keep yourselves and your loved ones safe during this health crisis.”
Romain was promoted from assistant principal between 2016 and 2017, public records show.

“This is painful for all of us, and I extend my deepest condolences to the Brooklyn Democracy Academy community, and the family of Principal Romain,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement.

 

City orders school officials to obfuscate any display of coronavirus symptons of faculty and students

 

THE CITY

Two days before closing a New York City public school building where a student tested positive for the coronavirus, Department of Education officials sent out an internal memo advising staff not to report anyone with potential symptoms to the city Department of Health, THE CITY has learned.

The memo from schools headquarters to staff systemwide went out Tuesday morning, days after Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that three public school teachers who’d been in a coronavirus hot zone had to be tested. At the same time, his health commissioner issued an order mandating that educators, first responders and city health care workers deemed at risk must be tested.

The memo lists a number of precautions to stem the spread of the virus, but explicitly makes clear the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene —  the command center for tracking the virus in New York City — should not be contacted.

“At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call DOHMH to report potential or confirmed cases. DOHMH is receiving information from about positive test results strictly from laboratories. We can support our colleagues at DOHMH by keeping their phones clear to speak with laboratories.”

Mid-morning Thursday, more than 24 hours after THE CITY asked about the logic of this approach, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokesperson Stephanie Buhle wrote in an email, “Our guidance is abundantly clear: if you’re sick, stay home. Physicians and public health professionals guide when testing is appropriate.”

An hour earlier, de Blasio announced that two schools co-located in a South Bronx building — the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology and South Bronx Preparatory — were shut down temporarily “due to a student’s self-confirmed positive case of COVID-19,” the designation for the coronavirus illness.

The statement notes that the Department of Education will “completely disinfect the building” and that the Health Department will “trace close contacts of this individual [student] to recommend quarantine and testing if necessary.” The two schools enroll a total of more than 1,300 students in grades six through 12.

Subsequently, schools officials tweeted, “At this time there is no indication that students in these schools need to be tested” but advised them to stay in their homes until further notice. The school building was shut down for 24 hours following a protocol issued last week by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

City Hall has not yet released any details on the circumstances that led to the student being tested for COVID-19, but during a news conference Thursday afternoon, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza confirmed the protocol advising staff not to notify DOHMH of suspected cases, explaining that the DOE did not want to “inundate” the Health Department.

City schools will remain open as scheduled during State Of Emergency because of the large amount of students who are homeless

Chancellor Cantstandya

NY Post

City schools will remain open indefinitely despite mounting coronavirus fears, Chancellor Richard Carranza told a parent group Thursday.

Carranza said the decision was driven by the roughly 100,000 students either living in temporary housing or shelters who depend on schools to provide meals and other programs — and other vulnerable groups, who lean on the school system as a vital social safety net.

That means many students would have nowhere to go and nothing to eat should public schools lock their doors, Department of Education and City Hall officials have argued.

A participant at the meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee asked Carranza about a petition with about 108,000 signatures demanding a systemwide shutdown.

The schools chief said the DOE would maintain the status quo “until 108,000 epidemiologists” make the same demand.

Carranza reiterated that schools with confirmed coronavirus cases would be addressed on a case by case basis.


Carranza said that the building would reopen after a thorough cleaning.

De Blasio kicks meeting attendee out for exercising First Amendment right

For those who don't have facebook and are viewing this on other browsers besides Chrome. Here's the whole hearing. Where our mayor shows contempt and gives condescending responses to every other citizen who had the mike. Start it at the 25 minute mark to save time. JQ LLC

Schools Chancellor Carranza walks out on town hall following complaints to his face from parents with kids being bullied in his schools

NY Post

 Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza was jeered off the stage at a packed town hall meeting at a Queens middle school Thursday as anger over school safety boiled over.
 
The Department of Education boss faced the wrath of more than 500 parents at MS 74 Nathaniel Hawthorne in Oakland Gardens.

“What is happening here?” parent Katty Sterling yelled at Carranza. “We’re not getting answers! Nobody is giving answers!”

Exasperated, Sterling told school officials how her daughter had twice allegedly been assaulted by a female classmate at MS 158 Marie Curie in Bayside and is now too afraid to return to school.
 
Her daughter’s tormentor was never suspended and remains in class, according to Sterling.

“The other student is sitting in school getting all the privileges and what is my daughter doing? Sitting at home, sick, getting traumatized!” Sterling screamed at the dais just feet from Carranza.
MS 158, one of the district’s highly regarded schools, has been hit with a string of ugly incidents in recent months, including a vicious lunchroom fight last week and a classroom sexual assault last month. Both incidents resulted in arrests.

Tired of an attempt at reassurance by School District 26 Superintendent Danielle Giunta, Sterling had approached the dais to give Carranza and other officials a piece of her mind.
As she vented her frustrations, others in the audience joined in.

After several unsuccessful attempts to quiet the crowd, Carranza rose and exited the stage as the hooting continued.
Earlier in the meeting, after the superintendent spoke, a school dad whose daughter was allegedly forcibly touched in an MS 158 classroom in November, tried to address the panel.

But panel members told him they were answering only questions that had been submitted in writing before the meeting — and that he was out of order.

NY Post

A mom whose daughter was seen in a viral video being beaten at a Queens school and who tried to confront schools Chancellor Richard Carranza about it at a meeting Thursday ripped him for abruptly walking out while she and others were trying to get answers.

“I will be honest with you,” said Katty Sterling, whose daughter was attacked in a cafeteria by a bully at MS 158 in Bayside last week. “I really don’t think he cares. He didn’t say a word, he just sat there. He had no answers for what the parents were asking. And then he left.”

A crowd of more than 500 parents and teachers swarmed the meeting of Community Education Council 26 Thursday night to address concerns over what they say are spiraling classroom conditions.

Carranza, de Blasio and wife are focus of Department of Education coverup

NY Post

Hands off.

An explosive whistleblower complaint sent to three city councilmen claims the agency charged with investigating wrongdoing in city schools has blocked probes of Mayor Bill de Blasio, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and their allies, The Post has learned.

The Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) for city schools is sitting on nine cases of waste, fraud and corruption involving the upper echelons of City Hall and the Department of Education, according to a type-written, four-page letter that catalogues the wrongdoing in detail.

One of cases cited involves first lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled $850 million mental health program, Thrive, which has a large school component.

The insider document blames Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman, who was appointed in 

February 2018, after prevailing in a power struggle with former Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters, an aggressive prober of the mayor’s administration and city agencies.
“Under Coleman, SCI is continuing to hold or redirect investigations into City Hall, Chancellor Richard Carranza and de Blasio allies with business or that are connected to the DOE to protect de Blasio’s image while he runs for president,” says the anonymous Aug. 20 letter signed by “SCI Investigative Staff.”

De Blasio dropped out of the presidential campaign on Sept. 20.

Other mothballed cases included a probe of possible mayoral interference in an investigation of Orthodox Jewish yeshivas that get city funds but skimp on required secular education; contract spending on de Blasio’s aborted “Renewal” program for failing schools; and allegations about Carranza and his top aides.

“SCI investigators assigned to investigations involving executives at the DOE and City Hall, including the Mayor, have been directed to instead focus on matters not related to the mayoral administration, his allies, etc,” the letter says.

SCI agents, it adds, “have been denied support in conducting these investigations and their independence in pursuing leads . . . that point towards City Hall and top-level executives at the DOE.”

In response, SCI said that Coleman “is aware of the anonymous complaint as well as its recipients,” adding that the letter was forwarded “to the appropriate agency for review” — referring to the city Department of Investigation.