The Number City Hall Doesn't Want You to Know

Kamar Samuels, the new Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, makes $363,000 a year.

His boss, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, makes $258,750.

That's a $104,250 gap — and City Hall sat on it until the New York Post pried it loose.

According to the New York Post, City Hall did NOT voluntarily disclose Samuels' salary. It declined multiple requests to confirm the number. The mayor's office and the DOE both failed to return comment.

Good Government Groups Are Calling It Out

This isn't just a tabloid complaint. Zilvinas Silenas, President of the Empire Center — a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog — told the New York Post directly: "If this data's not public, this is definitely not transparent. Wasn't transparency one of Mamdani's calls to action? We'd love to see that transparency."

Hard to argue with that. Mamdani campaigned on openness. His first major hire comes with a secret six-figure salary. That's a bad look on day one.

This Isn't New — It's a Pattern

The NYC Schools Chancellor has been out-earning the mayor for years. This isn't a Mamdani invention. It's a structural problem baked into how the city compensates its bureaucracy.

The New York Daily News reported in October 2024 that under Mayor Eric Adams, former Schools Chancellor David Banks saw his salary boosted to $414,799 — a 12.5% raise from his previous $363,346. That made Banks the highest-paid city employee in the municipal payroll database going back to fiscal year 2014.

A schools chancellor who later had his home raided by federal authorities as part of a corruption probe was pulling down over $400,000 in taxpayer money. Banks resigned. The raise stayed on the books.

The Broader Pay Explosion Under Adams

The Daily News data shows it wasn't just Banks. Six of Adams' deputy mayors saw their salaries jump to $287,663 from $251,982. That includes Philip Banks — the former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and David Banks' brother — who also resigned amid the federal corruption sweep.

First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, another federal-probe casualty, saw her pay climb to $313,941 from $275,000. Former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban got a 12.5% bump too, before resigning.

Meanwhile, Adams' own salary sat frozen at $258,750 — unchanged since January 1, 2022, per the Daily News. He didn't even collect the $3,000 bonus issued to other non-unionized managers.

The result: most of his senior staff made more than he did. As did his commissioners. As did the schools chancellor.

How Does This Keep Happening?

Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy declined to comment on the pay disclosures, according to the Daily News. His deputy, Liz Garcia, explained that the mayor's salary is set by law and requires a City Charter amendment to change.

Fair enough. But that doesn't explain why nobody in City Hall thought the public deserved to know what Samuels earns. Salaries for public employees are public records. Hiding them isn't a legal gray area. It's a choice.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Missing

Most coverage treats the salary gap as a quirky headline — "Chancellor makes more than the mayor, isn't that wild?" That framing buries the central issue.

The issue is accountability-free compensation. Chancellors come and go. Raises stick. David Banks got a massive pay hike, then resigned under a federal cloud. Nobody clawed that money back. Nobody was held responsible for authorizing it.

Samuels got a $100,000-plus raise just by being appointed. No performance review. No public vetting of the compensation. No disclosure until a reporter forced the issue.

And historically, the job has paid well regardless of results. Richard Carranza, appointed by Mayor de Blasio in 2018, came in at $345,000 according to Wikipedia — while NYC schools were already struggling with chronic performance gaps that have only widened.

The salary keeps going up. The outcomes don't follow.

What This Means for Regular New Yorkers

New York City taxpayers are funding a school system where the top executive earns more than most private-sector professionals — and the people cutting those checks won't even confirm the number publicly.

NYC public schools serve roughly 900,000 students. Reading and math proficiency rates remain dismal. The DOE budget runs into the tens of billions. And the city's response to basic salary transparency questions is silence.

Mamdani ran on accountability. His first test was simple: tell the public what his schools chancellor makes. He failed it.