New York City’s Department of Education has been paying 33-year-old Caleb Haraguchi-Combs a salary of more than $192,000 to serve as project director of Next Generation Technology High School — a campus that was never approved and never opened to students, according to a New York Post report published Sunday.
Haraguchi-Combs, who is also a rapper, was tapped earlier this year to lead the proposed school, which was designed to focus student learning on artificial intelligence and computer technology. Project directors of new schools typically go on to serve as the school’s principal once it opens.
But Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels cut the proposal in April. The Post reported the decision followed what it described as “woke backlash over its merit-based admissions model and general fear of AI in schools.” The city’s education department separately announced a policy in September banning generative AI tools for students from early childhood through eighth grade.
Before taking the project director role, Haraguchi-Combs worked as assistant principal at the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, earning over $140,000 a year. He no longer holds that position.
The DOE told the Post that Haraguchi-Combs is currently “developing new proposals and supporting in-progress proposals,” which the department described as a typical role for project directors whose schools have not opened.
A DOE source disputed that characterization, telling the Post that officials mishandled the situation from the start.
“Unless a principal has tenure, they get bumped back to AP if their schools don’t open,” the source said, adding that officials “never should have named a principal before the school was approved.”
Outside the school system, Haraguchi-Combs has released music, including a track called “War Propaganda” available on Apple Music, with lyrics that read in part: “Every politician out there losing it, what the hell they doing with all that power… why is revolution always met with so much callousness… there’s a war going on outside no one is safe from.”
The episode comes amid separate reporting that teachers in New York City’s public schools have been passing nearly 100 percent of their students even as large numbers of children struggle with basic math and reading.
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