arrow Meisha Porter Department of Education handout
Meisha Porter’s rise as the next New York City Schools Chancellor is being praised by advocates and lawmakers who see the veteran educator, herself a product of local schools with 20 years of experience at the Department of Education, as an on-the-ground leader ready to reopen the nation’s largest school system still reeling from the pandemic.
With just 10 months before the start of a new mayoral administration, Porter inherits a system in which the pandemic inflamed educational inequities, highlighted by remote learningdifficulties ranging from lack of technological equipment to connectivity issues to disengagement. She’ll have to grapple with school desegregation issues that have dogged Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza for years, in a sprawling 960,000-student system whose enrollment is 41% Latino, 26% Black, 16% Asian and 15% white.