“Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox. On the campaign trail, Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged to reduce fraud and waste in Education Department contracts, which total nearly $13 billion in spending, about a tenth of the entire New York City budget. Recent allegations that his chancellor, Kamar Samuels, violated key contracting rules are complicating those efforts and have put the mayor in a delicate position. The allegations that Samuels skirted the competitive bidding process in his prior role have brought scrutiny from investigators , lawmakers , and the public, while also casting a brighter spotlight on a system that almost all observers say is deeply flawed, even if they disagree about how to fix it. One member of the City Council, Queens Democrat Phil Wong, has called for Samuels to resign , arguing he is not the right leader to oversee contract reforms. So far, Mamdani has publicly stood by Samuels and has asked allies on the City Council to do the same, according to someone familiar with the outreach. In interviews with more than a dozen educators, administrators, and elected officials deeply familiar with the Education Department’s procurement system, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about the system, few expressed surprise that someone might go outside the rules. They described a broken contracting and procurement process that can make it difficult, or nearly impossible, to get services for children in a timely fashion. “At no agency is [the procurement process] more painfully cumbersome, bureaucratic, and slow than in the DOE,” said Brooklyn Council member Lincoln Restler. “Frankly this situation underscores the urgent need for procurement reform.” The allegations against Samuels, first reported by independent journalist Sue Edelman and The New York Post , stem from his recent tenure leading Manhattan’s District 3, which spans the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem. The city Special Commissioner of Investigation, or SCI, found last year that Samuels’ former deputy superintendent, Mariela Graham, improperly split a larger contract with a vendor into smaller chunks to avoid a $25,000 competitive bidding threshold, a practice referred to as contract splitting. The vendor hired and placed language teachers in the district. The investigation began after school officials reported that one of the teachers employed by the vendor was barred from working in city public schools because of past sexual misconduct. Samuels wasn’t mentioned in SCI’s 2025 report, but City Council testimony from Sean Kreyling , the owner of the vendor, along with emails shared by the vendor with SCI and viewed by Chalkbeat, suggest Samuels approved a similar arrangement with the same company the year before. Asked to confirm if Samuels is under investigation, SCI spokesperson Anna Correa said the agency is “aware of these new allegations, and will handle them accordingly.” Several people familiar with the situation said that Samuels and Graham were scrambling to find language teachers to place at schools receiving large numbers of migrant students. Language and bilingual teachers are typically among the most difficult positions to fill for New York City schools. Graham did not respond to a request for comment. Samuels, who has declined to answer specific questions about the episode, has defended himself. “While I regret this lapse in procedure,” he said in a statement, “the actions in question were undertaken in pursuit of educational opportunities for children — not for personal gain or to benefit anyone other than our schoolchildren.” The $25,000 threshold: A safeguard or bottleneck? Contracts make up a large and growing share of the city Education Department’s budget, increasing from about $3.2 billion in 2014 to roughly $13 billion, according to the City Council. Mamdani took aim at the system as a mayoral candidate, pledging to “overhaul procurement infrastructure” across the Education Department and cut contracted spending by 10%. The $25,000 threshold Samuels is accused of violating is a key safeguard meant to ensure that vendors getting large sums of taxpayer money have been thoroughly vetted and are offering the best prices. To make a purchase above $25,000, a principal or other official is required to use a vendor that has a contract with the central procurement office. But the process of getting a central contract can take up to a year, according to city officials. Some vendors don’t even attempt it and others give up, vendors and officials told Chalkbeat. Several principals said they sometimes can’t find the services they need from a contracted vendor, and those are often more expensive than non-contracted vendors. Kreyling, the owner of the language teacher company involved in the District 3 allegations, said he began the process to get centrally approved and waited months before giving up. “It’s a pretty arduous process … chaotic and disorganized,” Kreyling told Chalkbeat, noting that in other districts outside of New York City, he can get a fully signed contract within a month. City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who is pushing for a more thorough audit of Education Department contracts, said during a hearing last week that she worries the practice of contract splitting may be more common than is known. “This incident, of course, raises concern that there may be more widespread practice of contracts being broken up to avoid appropriate spending scrutiny,” she said. A separate 2025 SCI report on the practice of contract splitting pointed to eight past investigations since 2023 that found school officials or vendors skirting the competitive bidding rules, including the one into Graham and Kreyling. Last year, about $386 million of total contract spending came through purchases of less than $25,000, according to SCI. Allegations highlight tension between scrutiny and efficiency The reactions to the allegations against Samuels highlight a key tension Mamdani will face as he seeks to reform the procurement system: balancing the need for stricter oversight with making the process more efficient for schools. Some lawmakers and advocates have argued that the allegations against Samuels show the need for tightened guardrails . Lawmakers, including City Council Education Committee Chair Eric Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat, have argued that if Graham and Samuels had gone through the vendor approval process, it would have prevented the teacher with the past misconduct charges from ending up in a classroom. SCI did not explicitly make that assertion in its report. Emails between Kreyling and Education Department officials shared with Chalkbeat suggest that vendors with city approval must run their employees through Education Department background checks. The SCI report noted, however, that principals are required to conduct background checks on any vendor employee who interacts with students — something that didn’t happen in the District 3 case. Many principals and Education Department officials told Chalkbeat they view the allegations against Samuels as an example of an educator working within a broken system to try to quickly get services for kids. “Hiring foreign language teachers is an incredibly difficult task,” said a high level Education Department official who requested anonymity. “It sounds like this district was trying desperately to provide services for their students.” The situation points to the need to make the process speedier and less bureaucratic, school leaders said. Some suggested raising the $25,000 cap, a threshold that hasn’t changed in years. Others said the process to approve a vendor needs to be faster and less complicated. That could also increase competition and lower prices. Lindsey Oates, who started this week as the deputy chancellor for the Division of Finance, Administration, & Human Resources and will oversee procurement reform, said she will try to “strike the appropriate balance of appropriate oversight of taxpayer dollars, as well as streamlining our operations.” Education Department officials have offered few details about how they’re approaching procurement reform. But officials say they’re hoping a reorganization to bring the finance and procurement teams under the same deputy chancellor will streamline the contracting process for schools while helping to strengthen accountability. SCI made several recommendations in its 2025 report to crack down on contract splitting, including significantly ramping up training for principals and other officials making purchasing decisions, as well as increasing central staff in charge of monitoring non-contracted vendors. Education Department officials said at last week’s council hearing that many of those recommendations would require financial resources the agency doesn’t have. In the specific District 3 case, SCI found that Kreyling “conspired” with Graham on the contract splitting and recommended that the Education Department stop working with his companies. Kreyling told Chalkbeat he was following the lead of city officials and didn’t know he was violating any rules. Investigators said Graham, Samuels’ deputy, displayed “astoundingly poor judgment” and recommended her termination. They referred the case to the Manhattan District Attorney. The District Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Education Department general counsel Liz Vladeck told lawmakers that the SCI report contained no allegations of illegal activity. The department opted to suspend Graham for two weeks instead of firing her, she said. A source familiar with her current role said Graham was recently promoted to senior director of strategy for Samuels. Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org .
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