When Sean Kreyling sat down before the New York City Council’s Education Committee last week, he explained plainly how a $180,000 no-bid contract in Manhattan’s District 3 actually got paid. (His testimony begins at 2:00:13 in the “Meeting Video” link.)
He testified that his company, Language Learning Network, was told in 2023 to bill through two organizations because Department of Education rules stipulate that payments to unapproved vendors cannot exceed $25,000. Kreyling’s company was not an approved vendor, so the payments were broken into $25,000 checks. The official who signed the $180,000 no-bid contract, Kreyling said, was District 3 superintendent at the time: Kamar Samuels, now the chancellor of the nation’s largest school system and currently under formal investigation. Samuels has acknowledged a “lapse in procedure.”
The nation’s largest school system is preparing to spend $37.9 billion next year, with nearly $13 billion flowing through outside contracts and vendors. The controversy surrounding Samuels may involve only a single contract, but it raises more critical concerns about how the DOE oversees billions of taxpayer dollars…