Feature

Harold Levy's Class War

In 1995, as Levy was rediscovering the public-school system, he and his wife found themselves deliberating whether to send their kids, Hannah and Noah, to a public school. After a year of discussion, they chose Dalton instead.

"It was soul-searching, because our values told us to support the public schools," says Sapinsley. "He knew the buildings were falling apart. And I became an architect because I was exposed to art at an early age, and a lot of my decision was based on telling Harold I did not want to deprive our daughter of the influences of music and art that I had." It's a decision that stirs up some of Levy's most important constituents. "Harold brings some very good ideas," says one superintendent. "But it's like telling someone to eat at a restaurant when you don't eat in it."

Levy stayed true to the schools in his fashion, letting Sheldon Silver know he wanted to join the State Board of Regents. For years, the Regents were largely ceremonial, but Silver, in the midst of a not-so-cold war with George Pataki, wanted to make them more activist. Levy joined the cause: He took the annual school-statistics report required by the legislature and read every page. "He'd string these facts together to show how little was spent on New York City compared to comparable urban centers in the state," recalls Steve Allinger, then the deputy budget director of the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, and now Levy's chief Albany lobbyist. "He was a lawyer preparing for litigation, preparing a brief. I was amazed. He'd make transparencies, and he'd make an audiovisual presentation that was quite impressive. They became known as Harold's charts."

Levy, still a Wall Street man, became a one-man lobbyist for the public schools. "When we went to the governor's mansion, Harold was actually arguing with him about money," remembers Merryl Tisch, wife of James, who joined the Board of Regents around the same time as Levy. "At the end of it, the governor said, 'You know, this is the most talented group of people I've ever looked to throw out of office.' "

Last winter, when Levy decided he wanted to fill Rudy Crew's shoes, his wife wasn't the only one who was surprised. "I told him, 'I think you have the ability to do it, but you're really spinning wheels if you think you can make all this happen,' " says Sanford Weil, the Citigroup chairman. "But he told me what he thought he could accomplish, and his motives were as pure as the driven snow."

Only when she started detailing her fears did Levy's wife realize how badly he wanted the job. "He said, 'Did it ever occur to you that I might enjoy it?'"

It was a Wednesday in April, his eighty-fourth day on the job, and Levy, still technically the interim chancellor, had climbed out of his Board of Ed Town Car and stepped into C.S. 200, an aging, shabby elementary school on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in Harlem, a city-mandated bodyguard one step ahead of him. Two days earlier, a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy had slipped out of a classroom, sneaked into an abandoned stairwell, and had sex. Hours later, the boy bragged about it to two 12-year-old friends, who then tracked the girl down and raped her.

When something is not going right, Levy sometimes allows himself to get mad. "Rule by tantrum," he calls it. That day in Harlem, he had no trouble losing it. "In the course of a conversation, the principal said, 'Well, these things happen in schools.' " Levy recalled later. "My reaction was, 'What do you mean these things happen? They don't happen!' "

It turns out, though, they really do happen: This wasn't the first time, even that year, that something like that had happened at this very school. After an hour in the principal's office, Levy had had enough. He stormed out of the school and into the Town Car.

The next week, the kids were out of school for vacation, but Levy agonized a full week after that before demoting two staff members and firing a third. This remains his chief regret about his first months as chancellor. "I should have shot from the hip, and I didn't," Levy told me. "It was in part because I was new, and I didn't have the courage. If something had happened when they were there, I would never, never have forgiven myself."

But he did send an e-mail to every principal in the school system, explaining that C.S. 200's principal was disciplined not because of the rapes but for trying to downplay them. "If he had advised his supervisor, it would have been treated as a call for help, not an admission of failure," Levy wrote. "Good managers do not shoot the messenger."

At the Board of Education, where scapegoating has long been a recreational sport, such e-mails are unheard of. Levy had turned a tragedy into a management tutorial. The day he went to C.S. 200, he sent word to the Board of Ed to consider him for the permanent chancellor's position.

For once, he's not in pinstripes. Instead, he's a symphony in khaki, topped by a tan Board of Ed baseball cap. It's the Sunday after the start of school, and Levy, Sapinsley, and their kids are at Shea Stadium, a few feet from the left-field foul pole. The Mets are honoring the New York City School Leadership Teams -- a parent-awareness program spearheaded by the Urban League and the UFT, among other groups -- and the Levys and a few dozen others have availed themselves of a special VIP terrace.

On at least one occasion, he's been known to take a book to a ball game. But today, Levy is into it, happy the Mets are winning; at times he even stops to watch the game. "The best writers in the newspaper are on the sports page," he declares. "All the day-to-day dramas, with characters -- it's like great fiction. It humanizes these large organizations."

What role will Levy play in his Board of Ed drama? Even he has noted how, one by one, chancellors martyr themselves, but he laughs that off. "I get to play Don Quixote," he says. "They had the privilege of leaving the city. I ain't going nowhere. And I refuse to be impaled on anything. I'm taking everyone down with me."

But some metaphors have a way of outstaying their welcome. "Last year, we were in Rome at the Colosseum," he says, "and I said to the kids that all American stadiums are built like the Colosseum, with the tunnels inside. And so today we were walking through a tunnel inside Shea to get here, and I said, 'See? Just like the Colosseum.' "

The smile turns wry. "Then Hannah said something about lions."