As Porter begins her new position, the city looks to move forward from a pandemic that ravaged so many lives and left tens of thousands of families struggling with hard decisions about remote vs in-person learning. High school students return in person to their classrooms in a week for the first time since mid-November; middle schoolers returned last month, while elementary and special education students had been back in-person since early December.
Nearly 300,000 students in grades 9-12 opted to continue to learn remotely.
Porter signs on at a particularly challenging time in the Department of Education s history. The mayor and the city are currently facing a lawsuit that alleged that the school system s policies have contributed to segregation and racism.
A Born and Bred New Yorker, Proud Family Woman
Porter describes herself in her Twitter bio as Executive Superintendent for the Bronx!! Mother, wife, sister, daughter.Disruptor, Leader and Teacher!! Proud Product of NYC Public Schools. In her introductory press conference Friday, she declared herself the product of a family of educators and a champion of equity.
Born in 1973 in Far Rockaway and raised in South Jamaica, Queens, Porter comes from a family of educators. She was raised by a single mom who returned to school to finish her own degree and was Porter s favorite teacher. Her Aunt Brenda was her pre-school teacher, cementing her early beginnings in education.