Schools Chancellor David Banks ousted two school board members on Friday embroiled in bitter education disputes related to transgender rights and the Israel-Hamas war.
The members, Maud Maron of Manhattan’s Community Education Council 2 and Tajh Sutton of Brooklyn’s Community Education Council 14, are the first to be removed after the city created a complaint process in 2021. The Daily News previously reported in April that the disciplinary processes were underway.
“It is a sad day when New York City Public Schools is compelled to take the actions I have ordered today,” Banks said in a statement, “but the violations committed by these two individuals have made them unfit to serve in these roles.”
Community Education Councils are largely advisory bodies that can review education programs and hold public hearings. Members can be removed through a complaint process known as “D-210” after the Chancellor’s regulation code that created it — but it was not operational until it was staffed this year.
Maron, whose district spans much of lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side, led a push this spring to overhaul the city’s inclusive gender policy in school sports after her private texts were leaked that said: “there is no such thing as trans kids.” In a New York Post article, she referred to a student journalist as a “coward” after a student newspaper ran an anonymous opinion article on Israel.
She and two other parents have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the D-210 process violates their free speech rights.
In Williamsburg, Sutton, who helped organize a pro-Palestinian student walkout last fall, was found in April to have disseminated inappropriate materials. The school board, which she led as president, skipped monthly in-person meetings in response to death threats and a box of feces after they called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Education Department’s community engagement office will launch a process to fill the vacancies and hold meetings again in District 14, the chancellor said.
