NYC Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels signed and then covered up an improper, $180,000 no-bid contract with an unapproved Department of Education vendor when he was superintendent of an Upper West Side school district, The Post has learned.
A report issued by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools left Mayor Mamdani’s hand-picked chancellor entirely unscathed — while his former District 3 deputy, Mariela Graham, took the fall.
The DOE’s independent watchdog found she and vendor Sean Kreyling, whose companies provided temporary foreign-language teachers to city schools, “conspired” to evade DOE procurement rules.
The 11-page report issued by SCI in June and made public this week never mentions Samuels — apparently by design.
The Post obtained the original emails between Samuels, Graham and the vendor, and a Samuels-signed contract, that shows the current city schools chief signed off on the deal in the 2023-2024 academic year, and split up payments to Kreyling’s two companies to escape city financial oversight.
“It is my understanding that you do not have an MTAC and cannot provide services beyond $25,000 each for two vendor IDS listed below. So the total amount for the work is $50,000,” Samuels wrote to Kreyling in a Sept. 5, 2023 smoking-gun email, referencing the city’s contract system (MTAC) and Kreyling’s two education companies.
Contracts over $25,000 would have required three contractor bids and a city comptroller scrutiny. By paying less than that, the Kreyling contracts signed by Samuels and Graham slipped under the city radar.
In January 2025, SCI received a complaint about a temp teacher placed at two Upper West Side schools by Kreyling. The teacher had been forced to quit the DOE in 2014 after SCI substantiated charges of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student.
As they probed why the disgraced teacher was back in the classroom, investigators unearthed a 2024-2025 contract that Kreying signed with Graham, Samuels’ right hand.
SCI blamed Graham for greenlighting the original pact and also for a near identical $180,000 contract renewal she signed off on on Aug. 22, 2024, and demanded she be fired, the report showed.
The report said that Graham and Kreyling “conspired to split DOE billings” to “disguise the fact” that Kreyling’s two companies were not DOE-approve vendors and that the contracts were improperly no-bid deals.
“It is inconceivable that Graham should continue to be employed by the DOE in any capacity,” the report stated.
Instead, DOE let her off with a slap on the wrist — two weeks suspension without pay.
Shockingly, in April, Samuels, who was appointed schools boss by Mayor Mamdani in January, rewarded his disgraced underling with a cushy $225,571-a-year gig as senior executive director for strategy at Tweed, according to a DOE source.
“She took the fall and now is being rewarded,” a high-ranking DOE source told The Post.
SCI also recommended that Kreyling’s firms be prohibited from doing future DOE business.
Kreyling, in an exclusive interview with The Post, defended his acitons, saying that because he had never done business with the DOE before, he was unaware of procurement rules, and let Samuels and Graham guide him the process.
He was also stunned that SCI never mentioned Samuels in its investigative report — since he had told SCI probers, he claims, that Samuels sgined the first contract and that he offered them the smoking-gun contracts and emails. He provided thos documents to The Post.
“I definitely think it was a cover-up,” Kreyling said. Samuels “had designs on the chancellorship.”
SCI First Deputy Commissioner Daniel Schlachet insisted the Samuels ommission was not to protect the future chancellor. He said probers were focused only on the 2024-2025 contract signed by Graham and tied to the disgraced teacher. He never saw or knew about the contract signed a year earlier by Samuels.
When asked why Samuels contract wasn’t mentioned in the report or if it doctored documents, investigators denied engaging in a coverup.
“It is absurd to imply that SCI might have been attempting to ‘cover up for Samuels,’” Schlachet told The Post.
Both contracts with Kreyling’s Language Learning Network called for an initial down payment of $90,000, followed by eight monthly payments of $11,250. They were drawn up on LLN letterhead drafted by the New Jersey-based company — also a violation of DOE procurement rules, according to sources.
Checks were split between Kreyco, LLN’s parent company, and Kreyling-owned Reimagine Education Group, which provides coaching and professional development services to teachers, according to the report and Kreyling, so that the contracts would stay below the $25,000 threshold.
Kreyling said Samuels not only signed the original contract, he was also involved in the negotiation process with Kreyling and aware of the check splitting, emails show.
Kreyling sent emails where Samuels was cc’d on the check-splitting scheme, documents show. But in the final SCI report, the emails were selectively edited — with no mention of Samuels nor the breakdown of check-splitting he oversaw in 2023-2024.
“A vendor needs to go through a whole gauntlet of things. None of the safeguards were in place. The procurement office should have drawn up the contract,” according to a second DOE insider.
“There should have been dozens of people involved in this contract. The superintendent does not have the authority to sign it on his own,” he added.
Kreyling claimed that Graham and Samuels sought his services because they needed foreign language teachers that would enable them to get grant money.
He said that competent language teachers are difficult to find.
“They needed a vendor and the grant was tied to world language; if you didn’t have a way to offer it, you weren’t eligible for the grant,” Kreyling said.
Samuels unilaterally terminated the Graham-signed second contract in March 2025 before the full amount had been paid, and Kreyling said he plans to sue District 3 for the remaining $95,000 he is owed.
“What did they do with the remaining grant money? Because they didn’t pay us?” Kreyling said.
Kreyling’s companies received 17 purchase orders totaling $365,000 — with $220,000 going to Kreyco and $145,000 going to Reimagine Education Group — beginning in September 23, 2023, according to the SCI.
A review of city Comptroller’s Office records show the companies have only received $250,000 — spread over 12 separate payments of $25,000.
When asked if SCI would open an investigation into Samuels now that the new contract has come to light, Schlachet said the agency “will take it under advisement.”
A City Hall spokesperson told The Post, “The administration was unaware of this, and we are looking into it.”
The SCI’s report on Dec. 30 — two days before Mamdani was sworn in as mayor — notes city schools are systemically plagued by vendor check-splitting and other procurement problems that helped drive up the cost of DOE goods and services last year to $386 million.
“Violations of procurement rules often resulted in financial losses to the DOE, led to state and federal prosecutions, and/or prevented the DOE from working with the most qualified vendors at fair market prices,” the report stated.
Mamdani campaigned to “overhaul procurement infrastructure across the DOE,” during the mayoral race, and vowed to target waste fraud and abuse in the system.
Samuels was appointed superintendent at District 3 in July 2022. Graham began working at District 3 in September 2022, according to her LinkedIn page.
Graham told CSI investigators that the district was already in business with Kreyling when she became deputy superintendent — but that she had no idea who signed the first contract, even though it was her own boss.
She said that she was well aware that what she was doing was against DOE rules — and claimed it was all her and Kreyling’s idea.
City Councilman Phil Wong called The Post’s findings “deeply concerning” — particularly regarding Samuels — and demanded an immediate probe.
“These revelations warrant further investigation, and if the SCI failed to fully disclose or pursue relevant information, that raises even more serious questions about oversight and accountability,” said the Queens Democrat, who sits on the Council’s education and finance committees.
“We need a truly independent audit of DOE contracting practices to restore public trust and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately.”
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