First Latina NYC DOE Chancellor is Ensuring Schools Support Every Child

Aransas Savas: [: 00:00:00

She's the [00:00:30] Chancellor of New York City Public Schools, which is the largest school system in the entire nation. She started her career as an English teacher and an NYC teaching fellow in the Bronx. We're gonna look at what it's like to [00:00:45] be the first Latina and the youngest to lead this extraordinary system, but also her journey from student to the leader and influencer of the success of [00:01:00] so many students.

Chancellor, thank you so much for being here today.

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Thank you for that awesome introduction.

strike me on so many levels. [: 00:01:15

And [00:01:30] without evidence to the contrary, that's all we have to go on. But stories like yours that show how someone who is, I believe you were the first to graduate college in your family. High school. High school. The first to graduate high school. [00:01:45] Yeah. In my immediate family, yes. Extraordinary. And to show that.

You not only graduated, but [: 00:02:00

So can you take us back all the way to the beginning? You grew up in the Bronx? Yep.

who came to the States when [: 00:02:30

My grandmother did not have much, and she remarried, and [00:02:45] that put the family in a very abusive situation. And so to get my mother out of there, since she was the eldest of five, she married her off when she was 15 years old, to someone who was like 10 or 11 years older than she was, and really believed that that [00:03:00] was gonna give her a better life.

nded up getting GEDs as well [: 00:03:15

And so she, uh, sacrificed to put me in Catholic school and that stayed with me so deeply because my mother shouldn't [00:03:30] have had to make those sacrifices. Mm-hmm. To give that kind of education. So yes, first in my immediate family to get a high school diploma and then to get a college degree. And I dedicated myself to public education because I, I don't want a parent to have to make that kind [00:03:45] of sacrifice.

backyard is not a wonderful [: 00:04:00

Aransas Savas: Mm-hmm. I agree completely.

Melissa Aviles Ramos: So it started there.

Aransas Savas: The school you were in, what was missing there?

ou don't have a coat. No one [: 00:04:15

Maybe you should get a GED. Maybe you should just go to work. My brother and sister are extremely bright, and I don't say that because they're my siblings, because I love to poke fun at them and tell them all kinds of, I make fun of their Spanish. I'm a horrible younger [00:04:45] sister, but they are brilliant. My brother actually ended up becoming a police officer and retired a second grade detective, and so I always credit my mom for having so little and making sure that she raised just three.[00:05:00]

me, schools have to be these [: 00:05:15

By extension being a family and working with families to make sure that we're cutting through some of the, the issues that plague families, particularly minoritized [00:05:30] ones and impoverished communities, and work to support sys uh, uh, families so that way children can actually get the education that they're deserving of.

re putting the blame on your [: 00:05:45

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Yeah, like my sister, she was working at Dunking Donuts when she was in high school, and that was the only food we had. So I was like a really chunky kid and everybody thought I was done.

I was just eating a lot. And [: 00:06:00

[00:06:15] Right. And that's not okay. We can't have those kinds of conditions for our young people.

Aransas Savas: Oh, the irony too, that they were probably labeling her as lazy.

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Absolutely lazy. And she was one of the hardest. And she was

Aransas Savas: working harder than anyone.

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Exactly.

sas Savas: Yeah. Incredible. [: 00:06:30

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Yeah, that's such a great question. So I studied English literature at Fordham and my, my concentration was on medieval literature, so my mother was trying to figure out what I was going to do with that degree. Fair question. [00:07:00] She was really scared, but I turned out okay. So when I walked into my first classroom, I really thought that I was going to talk about King Arthur and that we were going to read Chas and Milton and [00:07:15] Shakespeare.

s into the, the light of the [: 00:07:30

And so I quickly went from being a literature teacher to a literacy teacher and. I would spend a lot of time after school with other teachers. As a matter of fact, one of them became one of my best friends and my future assistant principal when I became a principal in the [00:07:45] school. And we launched like a literacy program in the school and wrote our own curriculum.

iant and they just needed to [: 00:08:00

And, and I think conveying that to young people and saying, I'm not pouring [00:08:15] brilliance into you. I'm merely giving you the tools you need to exercise agency and to talk about all of the amazing ideas that you have. Is the shift shift in my success when I became a better teacher, that first year was a little rocky, so it [00:08:30] started.

ped two of them get jobs and [: 00:08:45

You really need an ask what your why is when you stay connected to them and their families. Mm-hmm. And it's very easy to figure out what to [00:09:00] prioritize in a very big job with a lot of competing priorities.

Aransas Savas: Mm. That's such an interesting point. I wanna go back to this idea of self-belief. And helping them believe in themselves.

t this with my own children. [: 00:09:15

Melissa Aviles Ramos: So I had a very traditional Catholic school experience up until the seventh grade. It was rough [00:09:45] because the, the Catholic school nuns are not to be messed with. And so I learned a lot of grammar and math, but I was always taught facts and I regurgitated them on exams and I got good grades and the the [00:10:00] goal was just to make mom proud and get really good grades.

me is Natalie Rider. She was [: 00:10:15

Matt Mahoney and these two teachers refer to me as a writer. When I would say I wanted to grow up to be a writer or a journalist, they said, you already are, and really [00:10:30] walking me through the writing process and giving me an opportunity to create original pieces and the way they celebrated me, but also gave me feedback to move me along.

ed with the writing process. [: 00:10:45

Aransas Savas: Yeah. And it's interesting too because it sounds like that gap was filled by your mother in those early years, and through [00:11:00] her actions, she was showing that she believed in you and that gave you perhaps the energy and the motivation to act like somebody who was worthy of belief.

o build on that. And I, I do [: 00:11:15

No matter where our school systems are, I think it's, it's hard to find time to foster that in every student. And [00:11:45] so we have the great honor of being in many of the schools and being a second source of support for that. And I love that. It's life changing. Yeah. And we all have a story. So knowing what it is and how to tell it is [00:12:00] what allows us to, to live our story.

So going back to your story. As we mentioned, we're the first, you were the youngest.

Music: Mm-hmm.

you experience the doubts of [: 00:12:15

Melissa Aviles Ramos: So it was both. I think there were times when I would say, what am I doing?

ted. Mm-hmm. I don't belong. [: 00:12:30

I kept handing in my papers. I would email my professor, but I refused to walk into the classroom because I was mortified. And then sitting in an American pluralism class and someone said, well, you know, quotas, I [00:13:00] mean, this is why certain people are in the classroom. And she kind of just like motions with her arm.

d just go get a job. I don't [: 00:13:15

Fall back on something because they didn't have the college degree, right? And my brother would always tell me, I'm so lucky I got into NYD, but like, what would I be doing if I didn't? I would've been a truck driver and nothing wrong with these careers, but like I didn't have options, right? Mm-hmm. And you wanna [00:13:45] have options.

And it was because of that, that I kept going but feeling like I didn't belong, feeling like I was exhausted and I couldn't do anymore. Those were very real things throughout my young adulthood.

nsas Savas: When you thought [: 00:14:00

Melissa Aviles Ramos: It's so funny. I would imagine having a little home and a husband or partner and a child and not worrying about [00:14:15] coming home and.

ecome an English teacher and [: 00:14:30

[00:14:45] And I said, wait, maybe I could be more than a teacher. Maybe I should go get a license to be a principal. Like maybe someday I could be an administrator. And it just kept going from there. But it was people believing in me when I didn't believe in myself that really [00:15:00] fueled that confidence that I needed.

he school system and what to [: 00:15:15

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Well, [00:15:30] I see myself first and foremost as a teacher, and my daughter is a New York City public school student. So I think about what things feel like as a teacher and what they feel like as a student and what do they feel like for our parents. And there are a [00:15:45] lot of different initiatives that look really great in the headlines.

ow to access these resources [: 00:16:00

What is going to support them holistically? What is going to give them access to incredible instruction and curricular materials so their mom doesn't have to sacrifice the way my mom did? How do we [00:16:30] make parents, partners? How do we empower them? We talk a lot about engagement, but I think engagement has meant in the past that we just check them off and notifying them of what we're doing for and with their kids as opposed to bringing them to the decision making table and saying, what do you think about these policies and [00:16:45] practices and what do you want us to consider as we're implementing and rolling out?

ng to school and not feeling [: 00:17:00

Yeah. I want that for my daughter. I want that for every kid in New York City. And so [00:17:15] whenever I'm making a decision and I'm launching something, or I'm making a decision whether to continue with something, that's kind of the thought process I go through.

lly easy to get caught up in [: 00:17:30

But what I hear you doing is really focusing on how, what it's gonna feel like. [00:17:45] And in my work, I have found time and time again that that is what is successful in terms of realizing the vision, but impactful in terms of achieving, achieving the aims. I imagine that that makes it a lot easier to [00:18:00] enlist the community that needs to make the dream a reality, because it's both the administration that you alluded to, but it's also these even more active and engaged groups, the teachers, the students, the parents,

Melissa Aviles Ramos: absolutely.

Aransas Savas: Yeah. [: 00:18:15

Melissa Aviles Ramos: I am super proud of the project Open Arms Work. I'll never forget when, uh, former first Deputy Dan Weissberg. Who just retired and love and miss him so much.

him, he was my boss, and he [: 00:18:45

I went back to him and said, I think. I think this is bigger than we thought. I think we're looking at some unprecedented numbers, and that's when we launched Project Open Arms and wrote the blueprint on how to welcome [00:19:15] enroll support. And that was such meaningful work because I got to see the system citywide.

cessarily. Didn't have those [: 00:19:30

Some of them would text me on WhatsApp and ask me questions, and so I just got to know the city in a way that I never had before because I was [00:20:00] so school and district based. My entire career was in the same district. I lived there, I worked there. My kid went to school there as a whole, the whole thing. So this was eye-opening for me.

ourse, I'm proud of New York [: 00:20:15

They're just like, what is a chancellor? Who is a chancellor? I dunno. And I walked into an event. It was a community event. It wasn't even a school based event. And this little girl who couldn't have been more than eight years old, [00:20:45] she said, that's Melissa Les Ramos, she's the chancellor. And she ran to me and gave me the biggest hug.

the seniors were like, Hey, [: 00:21:00

Aransas Savas: Yeah. Accessible. It sounds to me as though they saw you as their champion. [00:21:30] Yes. I hope so. And so you're giving that self belief. How many students are there in New York City? Almost a million. Almost a million. Like Uber, mom, Uber. Uber, and I call them my kids. They do. Yeah. [00:21:45] Yeah. Almost a million children that you get to invest belief in.

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Yes.

tly. Filter their energy and [: 00:22:00

Right. Like you, if you, if you step back and think about the progressive impact of that, it's pretty mind boggling. Yeah. So you've been in your new role for a few [00:22:30] months now. It can take a while. I'd like to, yeah. Inching to a year. Oh my gosh. A lot's happened. Whatcha feeling proud of in this new role?

City reads themselves, and I [: 00:22:45

To be his successor. I remember a lot of, a lot of people were very nervous [00:23:00] that I was going to do what other chancellors did, which is kind of just turn the tables over and start from scratch. And I made that promise to New York City and said, I'm not doing that. Like we have some good stuff going on, but the devil's in the detail.

d if I'm being honest, there [: 00:23:15

And my [00:23:30] deputy Chancellor, Donika Rux and her team have been incredible and in in helping to move that work. But I think people doubted us. They thought that things were gonna fall apart with so much transition. And not only did we keep the train moving, but those test scores went up. 7.2, [00:23:45] increase in in reading at 3.5 in math.

e numbers are still means to [: 00:24:00

But we saw the greatest growth in those two populations that have historically not performed well at all. And so we're starting to see that gap close a [00:24:15] little bit and and I'm very proud of it because as the mother of a little brown girl who struggled with reading and math herself and still continues to have some of those issues coming outta COVID, it is definitely my charge to make sure that we're doing all that we can to help our [00:24:30] children.

ot of questions. You look at [: 00:24:45

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Yeah, so I. Have this amazing dashboard [00:25:00] that my team created and little nerdy me logs on every single morning and checks it from attendance to number of incidents and suspension, and then I can disaggregate by district and school and I can see all the things. But quite [00:25:15] simply, the most powerful data collection happens in schools and those qualitative data and those organic conversations with teachers and with school aides and with cafeteria workers and safety agents, and hearing directly from [00:25:30] the people on the front lines.

outlook. And Chancellor's a [: 00:25:45

And I wanted to make sure that I was listening to kids and families from all different walks of life. I launched a policy team, so I have this policy and strategy team that they come with me to these listening [00:26:00] sessions and they host focus groups with advocates and. Blog, all the low inference data and they codify it and they identify themes and trends and patterns, and then that kind of gives us our marching orders [00:26:15] in terms of working with legislators and advocates and with City Hall, and what do we budget for?

ta and quantitative data are [: 00:26:30

Aransas Savas: Yeah. I believe in that so deeply and it's funny you took me back 'cause I was [00:26:45] listening to very, very early in my career, the first time I met with an executive vice president and it felt very fancy and very intimidating and he took notes while we. And I had this overwhelming sense of I'm being [00:27:00] heard.

ask than to ask and ignore. [: 00:27:15

You are in this great big job with all of this influence, and yet. You're a [00:27:30] human being, so what are you? We talk about building courage capital, so sort of building more self belief to do the next big thing. Whatcha raising courage capital to do next?

os: I would say. That I have [: 00:27:45

Mm. And what I mean by that is I didn't realize, since I was Chancellor Banks' chief of staff, I saw how people interacted with him. He's this big, charming [00:28:00] personality and everybody knows who he is. And as soon as I got in the seats. People kind of waited for me to come to them and to prove myself. And as I was, you know, when one of the younger chancellors [00:28:15] in the seat, I think a lot of people treated me like I didn't deserve to be here.

g completely transparent and [: 00:28:30

I know that I am the best person for this job in this moment. [00:28:45] I don't think it's a mistake or a coincidence that project Open Arms happened and I led that, and here we are supporting immigrant students and families. And they know that I'm their advocate and I have the added benefit [00:29:00] of being a chancellor who has a student, a child in the system, right?

roles are and that I am very [: 00:29:15

Mm-hmm. And I want other women. Particularly younger [00:29:45] women who are up and coming and don't necessarily have the grades or the breeding or the con or the context. I didn't know anybody. I remember coming to Tweed and someone said, do you know who that is? That was just talking to you. And I said, no, but she was so nice.

They're like. That's [: 00:30:00

And there's no such thing as someone who's. Perfect. Or you know who fits the profile. Like [00:30:30] when we break those molds, that's when we sometimes find the best leadership.

Aransas Savas: Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times, yes. How do you remind yourself of this day and day out? Is it like, do you have a post-it? Are you like doing a mantra?

ng? Are you talking about it [: 00:30:45

Melissa Aviles Ramos: I. Make sure that my social media is protected. Mm-hmm. So I don't have a lot of people following me personally, but I follow a lot of really positive [00:31:00] people that pour that into me. So when I'm scrolling like everyone else in America who's over, who's addicted to their phones, I am seeing that positivity.

ns to me whine about myself, [: 00:31:15

I want her [00:31:30] to see that regardless of our circumstances, we can accomplish what what we want for ourselves.

ther guest. Who do you think [: 00:31:45

Melissa Aviles Ramos: So I think you should talk to Assembly Woman Catalina Cruz.

om Queens. She is incredible [: 00:32:00

She's intense, she's brilliant, she's just phenomenal. And really, she could have scared the heck out of me, but I said. Assembly woman, you're absolutely right. We need to do more. And this is what I'm mapping out. And just because I acknowledged that like we needed to do better, [00:32:30] she was like, okay. And from there on, we just became super close friends and she was one of the first people I called to let her know that I was becoming chancellor.

ou can't tell you who she's, [: 00:32:45

And so they'll bring all these powerful women together who don't necessarily know each other and say, okay. You're a bestie and you're a bestie. Now we're all besties. So now we work together, right? And, and just this ecosystem of women who love each [00:33:15] other, who don't judge each other, but give each other honest feedback, right?

Mm-hmm. 'cause real friendship is about being honest. Mm-hmm. And not providing an echo chamber. Mm-hmm. She has quite the story because she was a dreamer herself.

t to talk to her. She sounds [: 00:33:30

Yep. Last question. So as Uplifters, we live for uplifting others [00:33:45] and supporting the missions of heart-centered women. So how can we best support you and this extraordinary mission you're on, chancellor.

so much. I would love it if [: 00:34:00

I also think that it is so important that we. [00:34:15] Feature some of our young student journalists and young student leaders who are doing such incredible things in their younger years because of the opportunities that we're giving them. So that way everyone understands that [00:34:30] literacy is everyone's responsibility and everyone's charge, not just the literacy teacher, an English teacher, and that people start seeing our young people.

innovators that they are and [: 00:34:45

Aransas Savas: I

Melissa Aviles Ramos: charge everyone

enagers have gotten. I don't [: 00:35:00

And I'm on a bit of a mission to rebrand teenagers because I think the only reason they start acting [00:35:15] out is because we tell them they're gonna be awful. And so they start Yes. And they're not engaged. What we So, because right. We're giving them boring regurgitated stuff that's not interesting to them.

was really, really wonderful [: 00:35:30

Melissa Aviles Ramos: Oh, it was wonderful to be, to spend time with you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I feel like I'm part of like this. Amazing society, uh, of women to be on the show. We're

it. That's what I call this [: 00:35:45

Thank you. You are truly an uplifter and I'm so glad to meet you. Thank you. Likewise. It's been an honor. Be welcome. Thank you for listening to the Uplifters podcast. If you're getting a boost from these [00:36:00] episodes, please share them with the Uplifters in your life and then join us in conversation over@theuplifterspodcast.com.

herever you get your podcast [: 00:36:15

Big love [00:36:30] painted water sunshine with Rosemary Ann. Time dwelling. Not perplexing though.

nd best love relish in a new [: 00:36:45

Music: lift you up,[00:37:00]

lift you up,

lift you up,

lift you.[: 00:37:15

Lift you up.

Lift you up.[: 00:37:30

Beautiful. I cried. That little thing you did with your voice, right? In the pre-course, right? Uh, Uhhuh. I was like, [00:37:45] mommy, stop crying. Mommy. Stop crying. You're disturbing the peace.