Miami Superintendent Backs Out of New York City Schools Job
March 2, 2018 by admin
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It was an embarrassing turn of events for the de Blasio administration, which appeared to be caught off guard and at first reacted with anger.
“Who would ever hire this guy again?” Eric Phillips, the mayor’s press secretary, said on Twitter. “Who would ever vote for him?”
Mr. de Blasio, not 24 hours earlier, had called the superintendent “the best person to lead the nation’s largest school system into the future.”
The pick seemed almost too good to be true — and, apparently, it was. Mr. Carvalho came to the United States from Portugal at 17 and overstayed his visa. He said he was homeless for a time and had slept in a friend’s U-Haul. He became a physics teacher, then rose up the ranks in Miami-Dade education. A charismatic presence, he speaks at least four languages: Portuguese, English, Spanish and French. He seemed well poised to hone Mr. de Blasio’s education agenda and pitch it to the public.
It did not work out that way.
Bafflement over what prompted his sudden about-face lingered throughout the day. New Yorkers — including Mr. de Blasio — grappled with how Mr. Carvalho could have so abruptly changed his mind, turning down one of the most prestigious and high-profile jobs in education more than a week after accepting it.
“My first response was just profound surprise,” the mayor said at a news conference on Thursday. As late as an 8 p.m. call on Wednesday, he said, “All systems were go.”
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Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Mr. de Blasio added, “He told me repeatedly this was his dream job.”
Mr. Carvalho gave little explanation except to describe an emotional decision driven in part by phone conversations with two students who were undocumented immigrants. They told him, “I don’t know what my future will look like if you leave,” he said. “If I were to leave those two, I’m probably leaving everything I believe in.”
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In Miami, where he has flirted with running for Congress, he was an influential figure with broad appeal. The day’s love fest was a clear reminder of that, and in Miami-Dade County the school chief has greater prominence than in New York. People in Miami who have followed his career wondered whether being thrust into the glare of the New York media, and the prospect of close scrutiny, had dampened his enthusiasm.
Ten years ago, Mr. Carvalho was involved in a scandal in which leaked emails led to speculation he was having an affair with a reporter who covered education. Mr. Carvalho’s spokeswoman in Miami said that had no bearing on his decision.
New York City is the largest school system in the country, with 1.1 million students and a budget of $30 billion, larger than the gross domestic product of some countries. Nonetheless, many educators and observers warned that Mr. de Blasio might have a difficult time attracting top talent to continue the work of Carmen Fariña, who plans to retire as chancellor, rather than someone with the freedom to cut a bold new vision. She was expected to stay through March.
Thursday’s spectacle is likely to make replacing her that much more difficult.
“How embarrassing!” said George Arzt, a veteran political consultant who was a press secretary to Mayor Edward I. Koch. “In the past there are people who have pulled out of jobs they’ve been appointed to, but I don’t remember any job as prominent as schools chancellor. But it’s certainly shocking, and they have to renew their search and find someone very quickly.”
Mr. Arzt added, “The problem is that the new person will be viewed as the second choice.”
The courtship of Mr. Carvalho went on for more than a month. Mr. Phillips said Mr. Carvalho met with the mayor twice at Gracie Mansion, once in January and once in February. Mr. de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, who routinely participates in City Hall hiring decisions, was deeply involved in the interview process as well.
Mr. Carvalho told Mr. de Blasio that he would take the job last week, Mr. Phillips said, and it seemed that the matchmaking had ended. But an announcement was postponed at least once when Mr. Carvalho said that he could not leave his district because of gun scares and jitters in the aftermath of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which is in a neighboring district. Mr. Phillips said an announcement was scheduled for Monday and then scratched, and the same for Thursday.
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On Wednesday, the news media in New York were told that Mr. Carvalho would be the new chancellor. Mr. de Blasio said that Mr. Carvalho agreed that City Hall could give word of the announcement to the news site Politico. But officials in Miami warned caution, saying that he had not made a public statement yet, so perhaps it was not final.
A measure of panic began to set in at New York’s City Hall on Wednesday night, after the initial news reports and indications that Mr. Carvalho appeared to be getting cold feet, according to someone familiar with the matter. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations in City Hall.
Late into the evening, phone calls went back and forth between New York and Miami. At one point, at least one senior administration official spoke by phone with Mr. Carvalho, who reiterated the promise he had made about taking the job, according to the person. Mr. Carvalho did not suggest he was backing out of the job on Wednesday, the person said, but instead offered logistical and other reasons for remaining in Florida that day.
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At Thursday’s board meeting in Miami, speaker after speaker lavished praise on Mr. Carvalho for preventing budget cuts to the arts, advocating on behalf of immigrants and stabilizing a school district that before his tenure had been notorious for political upheaval.
After bathing in more than two hours of praise, Mr. Carvalho spoke, and then he asked for several breaks. As he disappeared off the stage for a few moments, the crowd in the room, which had been resigned to his leaving, started to wonder whether he might stay. Those breaks turned out to be attempts to speak to Mr. de Blasio. He eventually reached him.
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The conversation, Mr. Carvalho said, was not easy.
“This is probably the second most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. The very first one was to leave my country,” he said. “I am breaking an agreement between adults to honor an agreement and a pact I have with the children of Miami.”
In Florida, the audience roared. In New York City, mouths dropped.
Mr. Carvalho left the dais to a mob of well-wishers who offered him hugs, handshakes and kisses on the cheek.
As theatrical it was, this was not Mr. Carvalho’s first public flirtation with professional indecision. In 2008, he was offered two superintendent jobs nearly simultaneously, in Miami-Dade and Pinellas County. The Pinellas County school board offered him the job first, but the same day, the Miami-Dade board ousted its superintendent, Rudy Crew. They asked Mr. Carvalho if he would take the superintendent job on an interim basis, but, with an offer in hand, he said no. In a chaotic meeting, the board voted to offer him the job permanently.
Mr. Carvalho then took two days to decide, saying that he was “soul-searching” and that he wanted to “honor the process” by speaking with the chairs of each board. In the end, he took the job in Miami-Dade, where he was offered a higher salary, though he said that was not a factor.
New York City officials said they would match his $352,874 Miami salary, going much higher than the salary of the current New York City chancellor, who earns $234,569.
A savvy operator with years of experience in the school district’s communications and governmental affairs office, Mr. Carvalho is known to speak in perfectly quotable sound bites. But he has also proven to be prickly when asked about personal shortcomings, including the possible affair with the former reporter. A media frenzy over his personal life would have been unavoidable as chancellor.
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Mr. Carvalho has long held higher aspirations, including becoming United States secretary of education, and being chancellor in New York might have gotten him closer to that dream. He said Thursday he knew staying in Miami-Dade was perhaps not his best career move. “I hope I don’t come to regret” the decision, he said.
Remaining appears likely to give him more control over the nine-member school board, which had recently started to question him more than in years past. His local stature will only grow if he is perceived as having sacrificed personal gain to remain superintendent.
Mr. Carvalho acknowledged telling Mr. de Blasio that he had accepted the job. His close friends had advised him to leave “on top, when things are good,” in Miami-Dade.
“When I walked into the room today, I was going to New York City,” Mr. Carvalho said.
He changed his mind in a “real-time decision,” he said. “I understand how unorthodox this is.”
When he finally reached Mr. de Blasio by phone, Mr. Carvalho said the mayor told him he’d been watching the Miami-Dade meeting, which was streaming online. Mr. Carvalho called the conversation “difficult and a little sad,” but also professional.
Asked about the tweet by Mr. de Blasio’s press secretary questioning who would want to hire — or vote — for him after reneging on his word to New York, Mr. Carvalho said, “I accept that.”
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Senate Intelligence Leaders Say House GOP Leaked a Senator’s Texts
March 2, 2018 by admin
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Fox News published the texts, which were sent via a secure messaging application, in early February. President Trump and other Republicans loyal to him quickly jumped on the report to try to discredit Mr. Warner, suggesting that the senator was acting surreptitiously to try to talk to Mr. Steele.
“Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch,” Mr. Trump wrote at the time. “Warner did not want a ‘paper trail’ on a ‘private’ meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame.”
“All tied into Crooked Hillary,” Mr. Trump added.
The Fox News article made prominent mention of work by Mr. Waldman’s Washington lobbying firm on behalf of Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate who was once close to Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s indicted former campaign chairman.
Copies of the messages were originally submitted by Mr. Waldman to the Senate committee. In January, one of Mr. Nunes’s staff members requested that copies be shared with the House committee as well, according to a person familiar with the request who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Days later, the messages were published by Fox News, the person said. Fox’s report said that it had obtained the documents from a Republican source it did not name.
The documents published by Fox News appear to back up the senators’ accusation. Though they were marked “CONFIDENTIAL: Produced to USSSCI on a Confidential Basis,” suggesting that they had come from the Senate panel, known as the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the person familiar with the congressional requests said that the stamp was misleading and that other markings gave away their actual origin.
Specifically, the copy of the messages shared with the Senate had page numbers, and the one submitted to the House — while preserving the reference to the Senate committee — did not.
A lawyer for Mr. Waldman independently concluded that the House committee had probably shared the document and sent a letter to Mr. Nunes complaining about the leak, according to a person familiar with the letter.
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Mr. Burr appeared to make a veiled reference to the texts during a public hearing with the heads of the government’s intelligence agencies last month.
“There have been times where information has found its way out, some of it recent, where it didn’t come from us, but certainly people have portrayed it did,” he said. “And that’s O.K., because you know and we know the security measures we’ve got in place to protect the sensitivity of that material.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Nunes, Jack Langer, did not dispute that the committee had leaked the messages, but called the premise of this article “absurd.”
“The New York Times, a prominent purveyor of leaks, is highlighting anonymous sources leaking information that accuses Republicans of leaking information,” he said. “I’m not sure if this coverage could possibly get more absurd.”
AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, released a statement after this article was published, saying, “The speaker heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts.”
In his meeting with the senators, Mr. Ryan told them that he did not run the committee himself, the officials briefed on the encounter said.
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were briefed on their conclusions in recent weeks and on the meeting with Mr. Ryan.
In a joint statement, Mr. Burr and Mr. Warner acknowledged the meeting with Mr. Ryan and said they had not requested that the speaker take any specific action.
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Mr. Waldman, the lawyer who communicated with Mr. Warner, could not be reached for comment.
The incident makes clear just how far the two intelligence committees — generally considered secretive refuges from the politics of Capitol Hill — have diverged over the course of their Russia investigations.
In the House, Republicans and Democrats have been consumed by partisan sniping, airing grievances on television and in the press, while the pace of witness interviews has slowed to a crawl. Democrats have repeatedly accused Mr. Nunes of using his position to protect Mr. Trump from the investigation.
The House committee spent much of the last month locked in a bitter dispute over the secret Republican memorandum, which accused top F.B.I. and Justice Department officials of abusing their powers to spy on one of Mr. Trump’s former campaign advisers. Republicans released the document over the objections of the Justice Department and the F.B.I., which warned in a rare public statement that it was dangerously misleading.
Democrats called the document reckless and said it was merely a political tool to tarnish the agencies investigating Mr. Trump’s potential ties to Russia. They eventually released their own memo, drawn from the same underlying material, rebutting it.
The Senate committee has conducted its investigation primarily in private, and Mr. Burr and Mr. Warner remained in lock step both publicly and privately. When Fox News published Mr. Warner’s texts, for example, an aide to Mr. Burr told the network that he had been aware of Mr. Warner’s contacts with Mr. Waldman, and the two senators issued a joint statement condemning the leak.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and another member of the Intelligence Committee, also defended Mr. Warner.
Sen.Warner fully disclosed this to the committee four months ago.Has had zero impact on our work. https://t.co/bnmI2Thedt #FoxNews
—
Marco Rubio (@marcorubio)
Feb. 9, 2018
And while Mr. Nunes’s memo consumed Republicans in the House, as well as officials in the White House, Mr. Burr largely steered clear of it. He told CNN it ought not to have been released, and in private he discounted it.
In the hearing with the intelligence chiefs last month, he sought to draw a distinction between his committee’s approach and that of the House.
“I promised you when we started a year ago that the sensitive nature of that material would, in fact, be protected,” he said. “The vice chairman and I have done everything in our power to do that.”
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