The city is replacing the head of the embattled Department of Education’s parent-engagement office in the wake of several embarrassing blunders since March, officials announced yesterday.
Director Ojeda Hall served for one year at the Office of Family Information and Action, which garnered unflattering headlines this year when a staffer was caught encouraging school employees to engage in political lobbying.
More recently, the office bungled the elections of parents to Community Education Councils so badly that the elections had to be redone twice and were delayed for weeks.
The elections cost the city more than $650,000.
“I really think she had an impossible task,” said Paola de Kock, president of the Citywide Council on High Schools.
“It really was a very big mandate with very little staff and probably not a lot of support.”
Hall will be replaced in September by Jesse Mojica, director of education policy for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott is elevating Mojica’s role to a Cabinet-level position that pays $138,000 a year, officials said.
“I think it’s important that we have a voice at the decision-making table whose primary focus is supporting our families,” he said in a statement.