David Banks, New York City’s Schools Chancellor, to Resign

The resignation of Mr. Banks, planned for the end of the year, comes amid a flurry of federal investigations into Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.

David C. Banks, the chancellor of New York City’s public school system, said on Tuesday that he would resign from his post at the end of December.

The announcement came just weeks after federal agents seized Mr. Banks’s phone as part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée — and it promised to roil not just the nation’s largest school system but also a mayoral administration already reeling from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries.

The schools chancellor’s resignation is the fourth in less than two weeks among top officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, following the resignations of the police commissioner and the city’s top lawyer and a statement from the health commissioner saying he would leave office at the end of the year.

Of those officials, Mr. Banks is by far the closest to the mayor, who recently said that he has known the chancellor; his younger brother, Philip B. Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety; and the rest of the Banks family for decades and would continue to have a relationship with them.

And the announcement of the chancellor’s departure caught his subordinates off guard. It landed just three weeks into the new school year, and occurred as his Education Department was still scrambling to address students’ flagging academic performance and behavioral and mental health concerns that were lingering aftereffects of the pandemic.

It was not immediately clear who would replace Mr. Banks as chancellor, leaving a system of some 900,000 students in limbo.

Tracking Investigations in Eric Adams’s Orbit

Several federal corruption inquiries have reached into the world of Mayor Eric Adams of New York, who faces re-election next year. Here is a closer look at how people with ties to Mr. Adams are related to the inquiries.

The resignation announcement was an abrupt turnaround for a man who has said since at least the mid-1990s that the schools chancellorship was the job he wanted more than any other.

But outside the Education Department, his past several weeks have been filled with turmoil.

On. Sept. 4, the day before classes were to begin in New York City, the chancellor’s phone was seized around dawn by federal agents conducting a bribery and corruption investigation that is focused at least in part on a consulting firm run by Mr. Banks’s youngest brother, Terence Banks.

David Banks’s fiancée, Sheena Wright, the first deputy mayor, also had her phone seized when federal agents appeared at their door. And his brother Philip also had his phone taken by federal agents.

That investigation was separate from the other three inquiries swirling around the Adams administration, which include an investigation into whether Mr. Adams and his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.

Neither Mr. Banks nor anyone else has been accused of wrongdoing in the investigations, and it was not clear whether prosecutors would file charges at all.

At a recent news conference, he maintained that he had done nothing wrong.

“I have always lived my life with integrity,” Mr. Banks said. “Every day.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Adams said that the public school system had “transformed” in the nearly three years that Mr. Banks had run it.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, we thank Chancellor Banks for his service, and wish him well in his retirement at the end of the calendar year,” he said.

That Mr. Banks would announce his departure from the administration at perhaps its lowest moment — and in the middle of the school year — underscores the depth of the crisis gripping City Hall. And it has given ammunition to a growing chorus of the mayor’s critics.

Gustavo Rivera, a Democratic state senator from the Bronx, became the fourth state lawmaker to call for the mayor’s resignation, saying in a statement that Mr. Banks’s announced departure “is further evidence that his inner circle knows the walls are closing in,” referring to the mayor.

Other elected officials seized on the departure announcement as well.

“There has never been a time in my life where the commissioners of three of the most important city agencies resigned,” said Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator who is challenging Mr. Adams in the Democratic mayoral primary next year.

Another Democratic mayoral candidate, State Senator Jessica Ramos of Queens, said in a statement, “As the best city in the world, we should be elevating talented leaders, not managing a mass exodus from an administration marred by scandal.”

Mr. Banks, a longtime friend and informal education adviser to the mayor, was the clear choice for chancellor from the night that Mr. Adams won the mayoral primary in 2021, when Mr. Banks appeared onstage with him, beaming.

And on the frigid winter morning when Mr. Banks was officially named to the job, the mayor-elect spoke of his admiration for the Banks family, and for David Banks specifically.

To thunderous applause, Mr. Adams said that he had not had to conduct a national search to find the right person to run the city’s schools.

“I asked him what he stood for,” Mr. Adams said of Mr. Banks. “I went and visited his family, and talked to his dad and his mother. I spoke with his brothers and the people that were in his circle. I wanted to see the character of the man I was going to turn our babies over to.”

The verdict was resounding, he said: “I know that this is the right man for the job.” He added: “And we not only respect each other, we love each other.”

But recently their relationship appears to have frayed.

People with direct knowledge of the chancellor’s thinking since his phone was seized said that he had become frustrated by the chaos engulfing the administration, specifically as it related to his fiancée, Ms. Wright, and that he was questioning the value of staying on.

Just last week, Mr. Banks sought to project stability as he gave his annual “State of Our Schools” address. During the speech, the chancellor tried to focus on business as usual, but referred opaquely to the swirling scandals.

“When life presents its greatest challenges to you, always go within yourself, and remember who you are, and stand strong,” he said.

Mr. Banks received a standing ovation from the educators and elected officials gathered for the speech, which he said afterward was proof of the respect he had garnered across the city.

Mr. Banks, who took over as New York battled a surge in coronavirus cases, was known as a charismatic and competent leader who often struggled to define a robust vision for a sprawling school system with 1,600 schools. He also faced regular challenges during his tenure, coming under fire over the supervision of the city’s free prekindergarten programs.

The school system also consistently strained to respond to the arrival of nearly 40,000 new migrant children since the summer of 2022, which frustrated many school leaders.

And over the past year, the Education Department had had to navigate tensions over the Israel-Hamas war. A raucous demonstration at a Queens high school — in which a pro-Israel teacher was targeted and moved to a different floor — became a major flashpoint for some Jewish families and educators across New York.

But in May, Mr. Banks was widely praised for his appearance before Congress at a hearing about antisemitism in public schools, during which he struck a combative yet confident tone and ardently denied that his district had failed in its response to incidents of hate.

That testimony is likely to be remembered as a high point of the chancellor’s tenure, and an occasion on which he put his considerable political skills to work.

“The complexity of New York City prepares you for moments like this,” Mr. Banks said after the hearing.

Rising through the ranks of educators, Mr. Banks was a quick study of that vast and complex system.

He began as a teacher, and, after a brief detour to earn a law degree and work for the state attorney general’s office, he returned as an assistant principal before founding a small high school in the Bronx.

But it was his decision to create a new network of all-boys’ public schools, focused on keeping low-income boys of color out of trouble, that cemented his prominence and helped put him on a glide path to the chancellor’s office.

When appointed, he spoke of pushing sweeping reform throughout a flawed system, and during his relatively short time at its helm, he unveiled a major curriculum overhaul aimed at improving how young children learn to read.

But many of his other top initiatives — including serving students with dyslexia — rolled out slowly and through limited pilot programs. And after the pandemic’s devastation, the chancellor faced criticism for not moving with enough urgency to remedy students’ academic and emotional setbacks.

“We’re not going to win every war,” Mr. Adams said on the day he appointed Mr. Banks chancellor. “But, darn it, we’re not going to lose at trying.”

Jan Ransom, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.