The schools chancellor needs some driver’s ed.
City Department of Education boss David Banks, who once promised to ensure students’ safety both inside the classroom and “in the communities that surround them,” has been chauffeured around town by a security detail that has been slapped with 27 vehicular violations, including 18 for speeding in school zones.
“To see the leader of our schools violating these speed limits is just unacceptable,” Yiatin Chu, an education advocate and state Senate candidate in Queens, told The Post.
“The safety of our children is of the most importance inside the school as well as around the school.”
The DOE honcho’s taxpayer-funded Chevy Suburban was first caught on camera blazing down the city’s streets in October 2022 in Forest Hills, just down the way from Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Catholic Academy, according to city records.
More recently, Banks’ metal behemoth was slapped with speed camera violations after his driver gunned the gas just around the corner from a KIPP Beyond middle school in Morningside Heights in July, and down the the block from Brooklyn’s Daily Discovery Pre-K Center in Gravesend in August.
“As the person tasked with ensuring our children’s safety, he should set a better example by ensuring his drivers obey the law, especially in school zones,” said City Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens).
DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said student safety is the department’s “utmost priority” and that the chancellor’s security detail receives annual traffic law training.
“When they receive tickets, they pay them and are held accountable — up to and including suspension of their driving responsibilities,” he said.
Banks isn’t the only city official who’s come under fire for school zone speeding violations. Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander has racked up 10 school zone speeding summonses over a decade using his personal vehicle, along with dozens of other traffic tickets.
The days of the chancellor having staff race him across the Big Apple at dangerous speeds are numbered, however, following this week’s announcement that he will step down from overseeing the nation’s largest school district.
His resignation came less than two weeks after federal authorities raided the Harlem home Banks shares with his partner, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, and seized their electronics as part of sweeping federal corruption investigations into the Adams administration.
Additional reporting by Rich Calder.
