Former NYC Chancellor Nathan Quinones, Founder of Harvey Milk HS, Passes Away At 79 - Lez Get Real

07/28/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Former chancellor of the New York City school system Nathan Quinones died yesterday at the age of seventy-nine. According to his daughter Adria Quinones, the cause was a stroke. In Lower Manhattan, he established Harvey Milk High School, named after slain LGBT rights leader and later icon Harvey Milk. The school was intended to be sensitive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. He also started a program to teach students about racism.

Quinones (key-NOY-nas) served for three and a half years, which was better than his predecessor Anthony J. Alvardo, who served a year. He announced his resignation six months before the end of his contract amid heavy criticism over his supposedly politically clumsy lobbying for bigger school budgets and from business leaders who complained that students were not being educated for the workplace. He did, however, manage to improve test scores a bit and reduce the drop out rate.

Quinones was seen as being ineffective with regards to his to his ability to cut through the school bureaucracy and at not being able to work well with the Board of Education. During her 1985 campaign for mayor, City Council president Carol Bellamy attacked Quinones because he “consistently failed to provide the leadership or sound management we need.” Mayor Ed Koch defended Quinones by pointing out that the chancellor’s low-key manner had hurt him. Koch said “I think we’re losing a first-rate chancellor. 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 expreienced. I think he was on the right track. I only regret that others were not supportive of him.”

Quinones was born in East Harlem to Puerto Rican parents on 12 October 1930. He would go on to attended City College where he majored in Classical and Romance Languages and worked six nights a week at a hospital. He graduated in 1953. He would go on to serve in the Army in Korea. After that, he got his master’s fro Columbia University.

The former foreign-language teacher went on to become the assistant principal in charge of foreign languages at Benjamin N. Cardozo high School in Queens, and then principal of South Bronx High School. He was appointed chief of the city’s high schools by Frank J. Macchiarola.

He is survived by his daughter Adria, his wife Romana nee Martinez, and two other daughters, Daria Quinones and Cyra Borsy. He is also survived by three grandchildren. In 1988, he told Newsday that he was happy to have resigned. He stated “I felt like a bird. I was amused. I never sing.” He went down the street that day singing.