July 27, 2010
Nathan Quiñones Dies at 79; Led New York City Schools
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Nathan Quiñones, who as the chancellor of the New York City school system in the mid-1980s pushed to reduce dropout rates and institute tougher achievement standards but who resigned six months before the end of his term in the face of public pressure, died Sunday in Manhasset, N.Y. He was 79. The cause was a stroke, his daughter Adria Quiñones said.
Mr. Quiñones had been a language teacher, principal and administrator for 27 years in the city school system when he became chancellor in 1984. He succeeded Anthony J. Alvarado, who resigned because of financial irregularities after serving one year. Mr. Quiñones served three and a half years.
Under Mr. Quiñones, test scores somewhat improved, overcrowding in classrooms eased and, by some measures, the dropout rate fell. He started a program to teach students about racism and established, in Lower Manhattan, the Harvey Milk High School, which was intended to be sensitive to the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. He closed a junior high school in the Bronx for unacceptable attendance and achievements.
Mr. Quiñones (pronounced key-NYO-nas) announced his resignation in August 1987, effective Jan. 1, 1988, six months before his contract expired. Early in his tenure, he was criticized as politically clumsy in lobbying for bigger school budgets. Later, business leaders complained that high school graduates were not well educated for the workplace.
Many criticized Mr. Quiñones as not being sufficiently adroit at working with the Board of Education, which oversaw education in the city then, and as ineffective in slicing through the school bureaucracy. (The schools are now controlled by the mayor.)
During her campaign for mayor in 1985, the City Council president, Carol Bellamy, demanded his ouster, saying Mr. Quiñones had “consistently failed to provide the leadership or sound management we need.”
Mayor Edward I. Koch contended that Mr. Quiñones’s low-key manner had hurt him politically.
“I think we’re losing a first-rate chancellor,” Mr. Koch said in an interview with The New York Times in 1987. “He has a very sedate kind of style. He’s not a pushy guy. But he’s a very courageous man, and he is very intelligent, very experienced. I think he was on the right track. I only regret that others were not supportive of him.”
Mr. Quiñones was born in East Harlem on Oct. 12, 1930, to Puerto Rican parents who had to rely on public assistance in the 1940s. While attending City College, where he majored in classical and romance languages, he worked six nights a week at a hospital. He graduated in 1953. After serving in the Army in Korea, he got a master’s degree from Columbia University.
Mr. Quiñones joined the school system as a foreign-language teacher in 1957 and was assistant principal in charge of foreign languages at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Queens when he was named principal of South Bronx High School in 1977. Frank J. Macchiarola, the chancellor before Mr. Alvarado, appointed him chief of the city’s high schools, ahead of many more experienced principals.
In addition to his daughter, Adria, Mr. Quiñones is survived by his wife, the former Romana Martinez; two other daughters, Daria Quiñones and Cyra Borsy; and three grandchildren.
In an interview with Newsday in 1988, Mr. Quiñones said he felt so relieved when he resigned that he found himself singing as he walked down the street.
“I felt like a little bird,” he said. “I was amused. I never sing.”
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