This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
One day after schools Chancellor David Banks abruptly announced that he will retire at the end of the year, he and Mayor Eric Adams tried to project an air of calm as they formally introduced the woman who will lead the Education Department.
Melissa Aviles-Ramos, the highest-ranking Latina in the public school system, has been instrumental in her work with migrant students, Adams said, even as he celebrated Banks’ nearly 40-year career in the city’s schools. Both men emphasized that Banks’ impending departure — the latest in a series of high-profile resignations at City Hall — had nothing to do with multiple federal investigations into Adams’ inner circle.
“I want you to see me as a symbol of stability,” said Aviles-Ramos, who was quick to cement herself as an ally to Adams as he faces growing pressure from some local and state officials to step down.
“Mayor Adams is New York City,” she said at a press conference. “Before, you would look at mayors and you would see someone cold and inaccessible and on the news. You see Mayor Adams everywhere.”
Adams and Banks publicly announced the succession plan at the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, where Banks was founding principal in 1997. They emphasized that the chancellor’s Dec. 31 retirement plans — and their choice to tap Aviles-Ramos — predated the current swirl of federal investigations.
Aviles-Ramos, who was born and raised in the Bronx, started in the system as a high school English teacher in 2007 and then rose to being a principal, acting superintendent, and Banks’ chief of staff. She was responsible for overseeing the Education Department’s effort two years ago to help the thousands of migrant students coming into the school system.
She left the department in February to work at a college only to return this summer to assume a role as deputy chancellor for family and community engagement and external affairs.
Aviles-Ramos’ return was part of a handoff plan that had long been in the works, Banks and Adams said. The mayor tied conversations about Banks’ retirement to January, while Banks said those conversations “intensified” in the early months of the summer.
Though running the nation’s largest school system is considered one of the most prestigious — and difficult — education jobs in the country, multiple observers said it would be next to impossible to attract a talented leader outside the city. The next schools chief may only be in the role for a year if Adams does not win re-election — or less if he is forced to resign.
“It’s hard to imagine who would want to work under Eric Adams right now given the cloud and chaos surrounding his mayoral administration,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and longtime observer of the city’s school system.
Asked about his decision to step down in the middle of the school year, Banks said remaining in his role until June was “a romantic notion.”
“But the reality is that, after 40 years, when you recognize that it’s time, you feel that,” he said.
Banks departs at a pivotal time for some of his key initiatives — including a literacy curriculum overhaul — but he said Wednesday that he will leave in December with “no regrets.”
“I gave it everything that I had,” he said. “I poured it all out.”
Fans Among Bronx Educators
During the press conference, city officials portrayed Aviles-Ramos as a talented manager who impressed City Hall by coordinating across multiple agencies to support migrant students as part of Project Open Arms. Banks described her as hard-working and single-minded but also called her “side-cracking funny.”
Aviles-Ramos has also won fierce loyalty from some principals she worked with, both as a colleague and a superintendent overseeing Bronx high schools.
“She’s the kind of person you would follow into the gates of hell and back,” said Ron Link, principal of the Theatre Arts Production Company School in the Bronx, who got to know Aviles-Ramos when she oversaw his school as a deputy and acting superintendent.
Other education leaders who have worked with Aviles-Ramos pointed to her experience up and down the Education Department’s organizational chart.
“She is one of these people that is able to take the experiences she’s had as a teacher, as a principal, as a superintendent, and speak with authority on what those roles entail and the challenges that folks in those roles face — but can think at a big systems level,” said Mark Dunetz, president of New Visions for Public Schools, an organization that supports a network of city schools.
As she addressed the crowd on Wednesday, Aviles-Ramos leaned heavily on her Bronx roots. She noted her family had struggled with the city’s schools in the 1980′s.
“The Bronx was a forgotten place,” she said. “Public schools did not work out so well for my two siblings. … They had to fend for themselves and find their way after school.”
As a result of that experience, Aviles-Ramos said her mom, a single parent, worked hard cooking and cleaning in order to pay tuition at a Catholic school. But Aviles-Ramos said that if families leave the system, it shouldn’t be because they don’t have good public options.
“We shouldn’t have to move to different districts,” she said.
John Powers, who retired as principal of Herbert Lehman High School in 2023, got to know Aviles-Ramos well when she took over in 2016 as principal of Schuylerville Preparatory High School, a small school in the same building.
The school was in rough shape when she came in, and just 26% of students graduated within four years the year she started, city officials said Wednesday. Aviles-Ramos helped push that number to 67% the next year, according to city data.
“She’s the real deal,” Powers said. “She actually knows instruction.”
Hard Road Ahead for Transition
Powers said he expects Aviles-Ramos, whom he described as a “very thoughtful planner,” to make good use of the coming months to map out a smoother transition.
He said he thinks she will focus on supporting teachers, a key task as educators adapt to sweeping curriculum mandates.
Some caregivers said they were glad the next chancellor already has relationships with parent leaders, as Aviles-Ramos served for the past three months as the deputy chancellor overseeing family and community engagement.
Though some education leaders treat soliciting input from parents as a box-checking exercise, “it’s definitely going to go beyond [that] with her,” said Shirley Aubin, the co-chair of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council. “She respects and appreciates the parents and families and community voice.”
Still, steering the city’s school system, a vast bureaucracy with roughly 130,000 staffers and 900,000 students, is a tall order under normal circumstances. The situation Aviles-Ramos is stepping into is hardly normal. Her predecessor is leaving amid several federal investigations of the mayor’s administration, which could cut short the mayoralty of Adams, leaving the length of Aviles-Ramos’ tenure uncertain.
Aviles-Ramos will face a range of thorny policy questions on class sizes, cell phone bans, and other issues that will likely require buy-in from the Adams administration, which will be harder if officials are preoccupied with the investigations, said one Education Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“I think the bigger question is … how do you make sure the distractions don’t stop work from happening,” the official said.
Other leaders had more experience than Aviles-Ramos at the highest levels of the Education Department, the official said. That includes Deputy Chancellor Danika Rux, who oversees the city’s 45 district superintendents and recently took responsibility for Banks’ key literacy and math initiatives.
Aviles-Ramos is also in the unusual position of having been named chancellor months before she is expected to assume the role.
“This is the most responsible way that you can do this,” Banks said. “It doesn’t usually happen this way.”
Banks said Aviles-Ramos would be joining him at “all of the chancellor’s meetings” over the remainder of his tenure.
And Aviles-Ramos told Adams she was committed to continuing the mayor’s education initiatives.
“I have your back,” she said. “We are going to get stuff done.”
