Education commissioner to visit beleaguered Buffalo district 9%
By Geoff Kelly0%
7/28/2026, 10:25:48 AM
Topics: School District Governance, State Oversight, Financial Management, Workplace Conduct, Political Appointments
Keywords: Buffalo School District, Betty Rosa, State Intervention, Board Dysfunction, Fiscal Crisis, Superintendent Resignation, Sexual Harassment Allegations, Kathy Evans Brown, Cindi Mceachon, Roscoe Henderson Iii, Adrianna Zullich, Larry Scott, Budget Deficit, School Closures, Pat Burke, Special Advisor, Monitor
BS Summary: This article contains 4 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 39.2% saturation with 431 hits. Analysis detected 548 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,100 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 24.9% and a BS Rank of 9% (20,455 of 22,405 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.30% of the article peer group.
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa will be in Buffalo tomorrow to visit the city’s school district, which in the past two months has been rocked by controversies.
Rosa’s visit comes among speculation that board dysfunction and a looming fiscal crisis — capped by Superintendent Pascal Mubenga’s abrupt resignation earlier this month — could prompt the state to intervene in the district’s governance.
Among the issues roiling the district, which serves 30,000 students:
Workplace sexual harassment and intimidation complaints against Central District Board Member Muki Hawkins and Superintendent Pascal Mubenga led to Mubenga’s sudden resignation earlier this month and an ongoing investigation by law firm Hodgson Russ into the allegations.
Hawkins has said he won’t resign and continues to frequent the district offices in City Hall where the complainants work.
The handling of the complaints by School Board President Kathy Evans-Brown led North District Board Member Cindi McEachon to resign in frustration last month, citing concerns about “transparency” and “accountability.”
McEachon and other members of the board minority complained that Evans-Brown withheld the complaint from them and violated board policy by choosing Hodgson Russ to conduct the investigation in a closed-door meeting.
The board majority, led by Evans-Brown and including Hawkins, then voted to fill the vacant North District seat last week despite urging by Rosa and Mayor Sean Ryan to consider waiting until the dust had settled on Mubenga’s sudden resignation.
Roscoe Henderson III, a retired Buffalo police officer, was sworn in last Wednesday.
That board majority is fraying: Vice President Adrianna Zullich, elected to leadership in January alongside Evans-Brown, has joined critics of the board president’s leadership.
On Monday Zullich and Evans-Brown sparred on Facebook over whether school board members could be suspended or removed from office for misconduct.
The answer to the online debate between Evans-Brown and Zullich: School board members can be suspended or removed by either the board itself or by the state education commissioner.
The last time it happened was 2017, when then-Commissioner MaryEllen Elia removed Carl Paladino from the Buffalo school board at the behest of the board majority, which accused Paladino of divulging confidential board proceedings to the public.
Evans-Brown did not respond to an email requesting comment on the education commissioner’s visit.
Zullich, in a text message, said Rosa’s visit was “news to me.”
“As part of the executive team, I welcome her and would love to know the purpose of her visit,” Zullich wrote.
At-large Board Member Larry Scott likewise said he was unaware Rosa was coming.
“I would expect that the board president would inform the entire board the the Commissioner is visiting,” he wrote in a text message.
Against the current backdrop of controversy and toxicity on the board, the district is dealing with an $80 million structural budget deficit that threatens to drain the its once-healthy reserves.
Depletion of the schools’ cash cushion could also weaken the City of Buffalo’s financial position, because the city often dips into the school district’s reserves when its cash flow is poor, then repays the district when it’s flush again.
Last December a panel appointed by the school board, after a contentious review process, recommended two schools for closure as part of a strategy to address the structural budget deficit.
Community opposition to the closures led Mubenga, then brand new to the job, to scuttle the process and postpone shutting down any schools for the time being.
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In May, the district adopted a $1.4 billion budget for the 2026-2027 school year that included the elimination of 51 full-time positions in the central office.
Thirty-six of those job titles were already vacant.
Multiple sources in the school district confirmed Rosa’s visit tomorrow, and that top administrators were clearing their schedules in preparation.
A district spokesperson declined to comment or provide details about the commissioner’s itinerary, referring questions to the state Department of Education.
The Department of Education’s press officer confirmed the visit and said Rosa would hold a press conference at 12:15 p.m. in City Hall.
New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa.
Photo: New York State Department of Education.
State intervention in district governance could come in the form of a monitor appointed by the education commissioner.
Five school districts in the state currently have monitors, according to the state education department .
The monitors serve as ex officio members of the school boards they oversee.
They can’t vote, but have a range of powers depending on the legislation that led to their installation.
Some monitors have the ability to approve or disapprove the appointment of a superintendent, and to veto board resolutions that contravene the district’s academic and financial improvement strategies.
Last week, Assembly Member Pat Burke, chair of the Committee on Cities, sent a letter to Rosa asking her to appoint a “special advisor” to the superintendent to help stabilize the district’s governance over a six-month period.
The special advisor, Burke wrote, should:
Oversee the search for and selection of a new superintendent.
Create a program of “mandatory governance workshops and professional development” for school board members, in an effort to address its dysfunction.
Issue reports after 90 days, and then again after 180 days, “evaluating the district’s governance, professionalism, superintendent search, and overall progress toward restoring stability.”
The appointment of a special advisor, Burke wrote, would represent a less drastic intervention than the installation of a monitor with veto power over board actions.
Still, he wrote, “too much state money is being spent to allow these schools to fail.”
“The question is no longer whether Buffalo’s students are being harmed by this instability, but rather how much longer we are willing to allow it to continue,” Burke wrote.
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The Buffalo News editorial board echoed Burke’s call for state intervention on Tuesday , noting that the board’s appointment of Henderson last week had further “ eroded public confidence in its ability to govern effectively.”
The issue was not whether Henderson was qualified, the editorial board wrote, but that “the entire process unfolded in what has become this board’s typically opaque manner.”
In Buffalo last week, Gov.
Kathy Hochul said the misconduct allegations leveled against Hawkin and Mubenga were “egregious” and “must be investigated.”
Regarding the prospect of state oversight, she noted that such a move would require approval by the state Legislature.
“That can’t happen by just a dictate, and I don’t know that it warrants that,” she said.
“There has to be full transparency, and the public has the right to know what is happening.”
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