(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) New York City will pay $2.1 million to three white Department of Education executives demoted under ex-Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and replaced by less-qualified non-white people simply because the executives were not “diverse” enough.
Lois Herrera, Jaye Murray and Laura Feijoo – who will receive $700,000 each – settled three months after a judge ruled they “offer evidence of race-based discrimination in Carranza’s DOE,” the New York Post reported.
“This landmark case is a resounding affirmation that discrimination of any form should not be tolerated in educational institutions, regardless of the race of those negatively impacted,” their lawyer Davida Perry said.
The suit that was filed five years ago stated Carranza waged a crusade against “toxic whiteness” in the DOE.
Herrera, who graduated from Harvard University with a master’s degree, was working as CEO of the Office of Safety and Youth Development until one of Carranza’s deputy chancellors abruptly stripped her title and replaced her with a “less-qualified” black man, Mark Rampersant, who held a GED.
Murray, who was working as executive director of the Office of Counseling Support Programs, was told to report to Rampersant, the first in a series of demotions. Murray is still on the DOE payroll but with sharply reduced duties.
Feijoo who worked as Senior Supervising Superintendent and oversaw 46 DOE superintendents was replaced by his underling, Cheryl Watson-Harris, a black woman who didn’t have the required licensing issued by the state.
In November 2019, Feijoo left the DOE when he found another job. Watson-Harris quit in June 2020 for another job, in Georgia, as well.
According to an internal DOE email written by the DOE’s then-chief operating officer, Ursulina Ramirez, a former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio who appointed Carranza chancellor in 2018, was “fixated on diversity.”
