The head of a company with city business interests had a private sit-down with Schools Chancellor David Banks within weeks of hiring his consultant brother, Terence Banks, whose business dealings are being looked at by federal authorities as part of a corruption investigation, the Daily News has learned.
A few months after the October 2022 meet, the chancellor also appeared as a keynote speaker at a science fair at Yankee Stadium hosted by the STEM company, Utah-based 21stCentEd, where the CEO, Marlon Lindsay, was in attendance.
Lindsay’s company has since the October 2022 meeting received more than $1.4 million in business from the Department of Education for providing a variety of services.
Revelations about the chancellor’s interactions with Lindsay and his company come as sources tell The News that the feds are looking at whether Terence Banks, a former MTA supervisor-turned-government relations consultant was part of a scheme involving unregistered lobbying and kickbacks on city contracts.
David and Terence Banks, as well as their brother, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, along with several other top Adams administration officials had their homes raided and cellphones seized last week by the feds who are pursuing that investigation and a separate probe focused on the NYPD’s nightlife enforcement.
Luiz C. Ribeiro; Barry Williams for New York Daily News; Eric Adams Campaign
From left, Schools Chancellor David Banks, Terence Banks and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks. (Luiz C. Ribeiro; Barry Williams for New York Daily News; Eric Adams Campaign)
No one has been accused of wrongdoing in the investigations to date and the full scope of the investigation remains unclear.
As previously reported, Terence Banks’ company, The Pearl Alliance, represents multiple companies with city business dealings, including several with financial interests before his brothers David and Phil Banks’ agencies.
Terence Banks isn’t registered to lobby in New York, a step that’s required for anyone engaged in directly lobbying public officials in exchange for compensation that exceeds $5,000 in a calendar year. It’s unclear how much money Terence Banks has been getting for his Pearl Alliance work, and his attorney says he denies wrongdoing and is not a target of any investigation.
The 21stCentEd firm — which touts itself as a company that helps “future-proof” the public school system — inked its contract with Terence Banks in September 2022, a company spokesman said.
Chancellor Banks’ detailed daily schedule entries show he then met with Lindsay for 45 minutes at his Tweed Courthouse office on Oct. 31, 2022, followed by the chancellor’s appearance at the company’s Yankee Stadium science fair on May 6, 2023.
The meeting at Banks’ office was first reported Friday by The Associated Press, which noted city ethics rules would likely require Chancellor Banks to secure a waiver from the city Conflicts of Interest Board before meeting with his brother’s client. It’s unclear if Chancellor Banks secured such a waiver.
“We’re not going to comment on any investigations,” Xavier Donaldson, an attorney for Chancellor Banks, said when asked about the meeting with Lindsay. A lawyer for Terence Banks did not return a request for comment.
21stCentEd ended its consulting contract with Terence Banks in Dec. 2023, the company spokesman said.
“Terrence [sic] Banks, along with other contractors, were hired to help with a marketing campaign to help 21stCentEd present its STEM solutions and services to decision makers within New York City Public Schools,” said the rep, Dylan Howard. “At the end of calendar year 2023, we evaluated all our contracts and made multiple decisions to terminate contracts that did not yield results, which included Terrence [sic] Banks.”
21stCentEd has worked in 18 of the city’s 32 geographic school districts, the alternative school district for adults and students in detention, and high school districts in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Their programming has ranged from STEM expos to financial literacy and entrepreneurship projects for students.
Overall, the company has done about $1.9 million worth of business with the Education Department since early on in the Adams administration, internal records show, with some $500,000 of that being issued before Lindsay’s meeting with the chancellor.
The business hasn’t been conducted via competitive citywide contracts overseen by the Education Department’s central procurement team, but rather via “small purchase” awards issued directly by individual city schools without bidding processes. Such deals can be entered into as long as the total value doesn’t exceed $25,000, according to city contracting rules.
21stCentEd has been awarded more than 130 such small purchase orders, including 50 worth $25,000, for services ranging from “data processing supplies” to “curriculum and professional development.” Twenty of those awards were issued after the chancellor’s meeting with Lindsay.
There’s no public record of payments from the city before Mayor Adams took office, but Howard, the company spokesman, said 21stCentEd was already working with local schools before Chancellor Banks’ involvement.
Howard also said the vendor’s pricing ranges predated its contract with Pearl Alliance and that Chancellor Banks was “one of many attendees and dignitaries invited” to the Yankee Stadium expo.
One of the Education Department-sponsored initiatives 21stCentEd has worked on in is Campus Coin, a financial literacy program for high schoolers that aims to teach them about entrepreneurship and investing. The program has a particular focus on cutting-edge markets like artificial intelligence, robotics and cryptocurrencies.
In July, Lindsay said in an appearance on Nasdaq’s TradeTalks series that his company provided the curriculum for Campus Coin and that the program is currently operating at 16 schools in Queens.
Lindsay said the goal of the program is to “infuse” technology like “AI, automation, robotics” into education because he argued children must be exposed to that “early enough.”
“We have to create this awareness and then infuse the information into the system from early, it’s got to be, and it’s got to be often and it’s got to be everywhere and by that we mean in school, after school and out of school, which is where CampusCoin comes in,” he said.
With Josephine Stratman
