Mayor Adams fills final seat on NYC education panel after ouster of anti-gay member – New York Daily News

Mayor Adams crammed the final seat on his administration’s education coverage panel late Wednesday — a submit that has been vacant since March, when he ousted a member of the physique after her homophobic views have been uncovered by the Daily News.

Kyle Kimball, a vice chairman of authorities relations for the utility firm ConEd, will take the final seat on the 15-member Panel for Educational Policy efficient instantly, Adams mentioned in a press release.

Kimball doesn’t have any skilled expertise in education, however faculties Chancellor David Banks mentioned his private life makes him a “critical” addition to the panel, which oversees the Education Department and approves its contracts.

“As a parent of a public school student, the husband of a teacher, and a deep history serving our city, Mr. Kimball brings critical insight to the Panel,” Banks mentioned. “I look forward to working with him to uplift our schools in the coming years.”

The appointment of Kimball got here forward of a Wednesday night time assembly of the panel, the place its members have been anticipated to vote on a funding method for the town public faculty system.

Kimball replaces Rev. Kathlyn Barrett-Layne, a Staten Island pastor who was faraway from the panel by Adams inside hours of being appointed on March 22 after The News reported that she has penned a number of books expressing excessive anti-LGBTQ views. Among different eyebrow-raising statements, Barrett-Layne positioned same-sex relationships in the identical class of “sin” as pedophilia in a 2013 e book concerning the “temptations” going through Christian leaders and their followers.

After Barrett-Layne’s ouster, LGBTQ advocates referred to as on Adams to switch her with a member of the homosexual rights group, arguing it was necessary for him to take action since he had additionally precipitated controversy by appointing three different pastors with histories of anti-gay views to his administration.

Though Kimball is homosexual, his appointment obtained a lukewarm response from Allen Roskoff, a longtime homosexual rights activist within the metropolis who has urged Adams for months to faucet a distinguished LGBTQ advocate for the education coverage panel.

“I know nothing of him,” Roskoff, the founder of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, mentioned of Kimball. “We have active members of our community who have devoted their lives to working with public school children and LGBTQ youth. It would have been great to see one of them asked to serve.”