Mayor Zohran Mamdani has inserted radical anti-police and anti-Israel members to the Panel for Education Policy, including one who is pushing public schools to have segreagated racism-reflection rooms, The Post has learned.
Among Mamdani’s 13 picks for the agency is race-obsessed former Department of Education official Lucas Koehler, head of the $500 million endowment for the Foundation for City College.
Koehler — who is white — pushed his agency to “dismantle white dominant culture” and supported segregated spaces in city classrooms for non-white educators to reflect on their purported anti-black racism.
The “separate spaces for white people and non-black people of color” would be used “to interrogate their own internalized anti-black racism and unlearn white dominant behaviors without causing harm to black colleagues,” reads a statement Koehler endorsed during his DOE tenure from the Division of Early Childhood Education Antiracism Coalition, extremism watchdog Canary Mission found.
Koehler, who worked for the DOE from 2014-2022, also called on the agency to sever all ties with the NYPD and said that cops pose a “threat” to minority students, as part of the letter he signed on to.
“In addition to the threat in-school police pose to black and brown children and their families, the funding allocated to the NYPD necessarily keeps money away from the social services that keep children safe and secure, and therefore better able to learn and grow,” the statement from the DECE antiracism coalition read.
Another radical anti-cop pick for the board is Raysa S. Rodriguez, who heads the Citizens Committee for Children, a group that has repeatedly called to defund the police.
The CCC called for the NYPD to stop issuing quality-of-life violations and for the City Council to reject funding a $225 million NYPD training facility in Queens.
Another pick Mamdani placed on the board is Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center alum Dr. Madeline “Maddy” Fox, who signed a letter accusing Israel of genocide and denying the existence of widespread antisemitism on college campuses.
“There is no rampant crisis of antisemitism on our campuses, despite prolonged attempts by the current administration to persuade the public that there is one,” read the 2025 letter, signed by Jewish faculty at CUNY, Berkley and Georgetown.
The letter went on to accuse the Trump administration of “Islamaphobia” for its attempts to combat antisemitism.
“This campaign of repression and censorship, including deportation and detention, is evidence of an Islamophobic and racist campaign against political dissent,” the letter said.
The PEP’s 24-member board approves contracts for the Department of Education — which boasts a $45 billion budget, sets policies and manages school closures.
Of the board’s 23 voting members, 13 are picked by the mayor.
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