NYC’s Schools Chancellor Signed a No-Bid Deal, Hid It, and Promoted the Deputy Who Took the Fall. City Hall Is at DEFCON 1.

New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels — hand-picked by Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D)to run the nation’s largest public school system — is now at the center of a criminal investigation into no-bid contracts he allegedly signed while serving as superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3, contracts structured to slip under the city’s financial oversight thresholds.

The Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools (SCI) issued a report this month substantiating misconduct — but pointedly omitted Samuels, pinning the blame exclusively on his former deputy, whom Samuels then promoted to a $225,571-a-year post. When City Council Speaker Julie Menin (D) tried to get basic contract data out of the Department of Education at a budget hearing, the DOE’s general counsel instructed Samuels to stop answering.

The NY Post, which broke the investigation, described DOE headquarters as being at “DEFCON 1.” A city hall insider told the paper: “They’re completely freaked out at the DOE. If SCI is calling witnesses for documents, that means they’re investigating Samuels.”

• $180,000 — no-bid contract Samuels signed in June 2023 with a vendor not approved by the DOE — split into $25,000 payments to duck competitive-bidding requirements · Source: NY Post; SCI report
• $365,000 — total purchase orders issued across two Kreyling companies (Language Learning Network + Reimagine Education Group) between 2023–2024 · Source: NY Post
• $225,571 — annual salary of the deputy Samuels promoted after she was found to have signed an unauthorized follow-on contract — instead of firing her · Source: NY Post
• $368 million — annual NYC school spending on sub-$25,000 contracts that bypass comptroller review — the exact threshold Samuels allegedly exploited, per Education Committee Chair Eric Dinowitz (D) · Source: NY1

In June 2023, while serving as superintendent of District 3 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Kamar Samuels signed a $180,000 contract with Language Learning Network (LLN), a company owned by Sean Kreyling that supplied temporary foreign-language teachers to city schools. The problem: Kreyling’s company was not an approved DOE vendor. And a contract of that size would normally have required three competitive bids and submission to the city Comptroller’s office for review.

To avoid triggering those requirements, the payments were split into $25,000 installments— the precise threshold below which the DOE’s oversight rules do not kick in. A September 2023 email, obtained by the NY Post, shows that Samuels was personally informed that Kreyling’s company lacked the required DOE approval: “It is my understanding that you do not have an MTAC and cannot provide services beyond $25,000 each,” Samuels wrote — then signed the contract anyway.

The following year, Samuels’ then-deputy, Mariela Graham, signed a second $180,000 contract with the same vendor, also structured with split payments. Total purchase orders across Kreyling’s two companies reached $365,000; actual payments received by Kreyling came to approximately $250,000.

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The Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools released its report on these contracts in June 2026. The report found that Graham and Kreyling “conspired” to evade DOE procurement rules. It recommended Graham be fired and Kreyling’s companies be blacklisted.

What the report did not do was mention Samuels — despite the 2023 email, his signature on the original contract, and his knowledge of the vendor’s non-approved status. SCI First Deputy Commissioner Daniel Schlachettold the Post that the agency would “take it under advisement” when asked whether it would open a separate investigation into Samuels. That is bureaucratic language for: nothing has happened yet.

Samuels’ response to the Post was to call what he did a “procedural mistake” undertaken “in pursuit of educational opportunities for children — not for personal gain.” He did not, and does not, address why payments were broken into $25,000 increments that precisely tracked the oversight threshold he acknowledged knowing about.

“While I regret this lapse in procedure, 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.”

Chancellor Kamar Samuels · Statement to NY Post · June 2026

Rather than follow SCI’s recommendation and terminate Mariela Graham, Samuels promoted her. In April 2026 — months after the investigation was underway — Graham was elevated to a $225,571-a-year post as Senior Executive Director of Strategy at DOE headquarters, known as Tweed. She received a two-week unpaid suspension; the rest of the SCI finding was effectively absorbed by a promotion.

The Kreyling contract scandal has a second layer that independent journalist Susan Edelman first exposed: Language Learning Network placed a Spanish teacher named Ralph F. Francoat two Manhattan schools while the procurement investigation was ongoing. Franco had a 2014 substantiated sexual-misconduct finding involving a 15-year-old student on his record — a finding that had previously resulted in his being barred from DOE employment. He was placed through Kreyling’s company, which was itself operating on unapproved contracts. Franco’s access to city schools traces directly to the no-bid deals Samuels approved.

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When City Council Speaker Julie Menin (D) tried to obtain basic contracting data from the DOE during budget hearings, she ran into a wall. “This is again basic, rudimentary data that DOE should be providing to the Council, and I’m not sure why we’re getting stonewalled,” Menin said. She noted the Council was not even asking for printed copies — just a digital file of contracts. The DOE’s general counsel stepped in and told Samuels to stop answering.

Education Committee Chair Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx) put the problem in context: $368 millionin annual city school spending passes through sub-$25,000 contracts that are never subject to competitive bidding or comptroller review. That threshold — the same one the Kreyling contracts were structured to exploit — functions as a no-oversight zone within the DOE’s $38 billion budget.

The DOE’s posture at the budget hearing — refusing to turn over basic digital records while its chancellor faced an active criminal investigation — prompted Menin to describe the situation as being stonewalled. The Mamdani administration has not ordered the DOE to comply.

The Samuels case sits on top of a long-documented DOE contracting dysfunction. A NYC Comptroller audit found that the DOE had awarded over 500 contracts worth $2.7 billionwithout full competition in a single fiscal year, with 85 percent of sampled vendors beginning work before their contracts were registered — some as many as 910 days late. Then-Comptroller Stringer concluded: “DOE acts as though the rules don’t matter.”

That audit covered fiscal year 2016. A decade later, the Samuels contracts demonstrate the same pattern at the district level: split payments to avoid thresholds, a non-approved vendor, SCI findings that protect leadership while disciplining subordinates, and a City Council left asking for basic data it cannot get. The scale is smaller; the structure is identical.

A civil and criminal litigator, Jason Goldman, told the Post that if Samuels deliberately bypassed financial safeguards, he could face exposure for public corruption, wire fraud, contract fraud, and official misconduct. No charges have been filed. The SCI investigation is ongoing and Samuels is presumed innocent of any criminal allegation.

The direct financial cost: at least $250,000paid to an unapproved vendor through contracts structured to evade oversight, plus the ongoing salary of a promoted deputy found culpable by the city’s own investigator. The indirect cost is harder to quantify: an active criminal probe hanging over the city’s top education official while Mayor Mamdani’s first school year approaches, a Department of Education stonewalling the Council on basic contracting transparency, and a sex-offender teacher who reached city classrooms through the unapproved vendor pipeline.

Mayor Mamdani chose to stand by his chancellor rather than demand accountability. That is a political decision with a public record attached to it. We will update this page as the SCI investigation proceeds and if charges are filed or Samuels departs the post.

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Last updated June 13, 2026