The faculties chancellor wants some driver’s ed.
Metropolis Division of Training boss David Banks, who as soon as promised to make sure college students’ security each contained in the classroom and “within the communities that encompass them,” has been chauffeured round city by a safety element that has been slapped with 27 vehicular violations, together with 18 for rushing at school zones.
“To see the chief of our faculties violating these velocity limits is simply unacceptable,” Yiatin Chu, an schooling advocate and state Senate candidate in Queens, advised The Submit.
“The protection of our youngsters is of probably the most significance inside the college in addition to across the faculty.”
The DOE honcho’s taxpayer-funded Chevy Suburban was first caught on digital camera blazing down the town’s streets in October 2022 in Forest Hills, simply down the best way from Our Woman Queen of Martyrs Catholic Academy, in accordance with metropolis information.
Extra lately, Banks’ steel behemoth was slapped with velocity digital camera violations after his driver gunned the fuel simply across the nook from a KIPP Past center faculty in Morningside Heights in July, and down the the block from Brooklyn’s Day by day Discovery Pre-Ok Heart in Gravesend in August.
“Because the particular person tasked with guaranteeing our youngsters’s security, he ought to set a greater instance by guaranteeing his drivers obey the legislation, particularly at school zones,” mentioned Metropolis Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens).
DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer mentioned pupil security is the division’s “utmost precedence” and that the chancellor’s safety element receives annual site visitors legislation coaching.
“Once they obtain tickets, they pay them and are held accountable — as much as and together with suspension of their driving obligations,” he mentioned.
Banks isn’t the one metropolis official who’s come below hearth for college zone rushing violations. Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander has racked up 10 faculty zone rushing summonses over a decade utilizing his private car, together with dozens of different site visitors tickets.
The times of the chancellor having workers race him throughout the Massive Apple at harmful speeds are numbered, nevertheless, following this week’s announcement that he’ll step down from overseeing the nation’s largest faculty district.
His resignation got here lower than two weeks after federal authorities raided the Harlem residence Banks shares along with his companion, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, and seized their electronics as a part of sweeping federal corruption investigations into the Adams administration.
Further reporting by Wealthy Calder.
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