#DOE’s yoga czar was removed from high school after no-confidence vote

Barnaby Spring, the city Department of Education’s yoga czar and self-styled “director of mindfulness,” was removed as a Brooklyn principal after the staff gave him a resounding vote of no-confidence.

“We were all united against him,” a former staffer told The Post. “We used to describe it like being in the trenches. We were at war against him.”

Following the faculty revolt at EBC High School for Public Service in Bushwick, the city Department of Education moved Spring to a Brooklyn field office. Years later, he met Cheryl Watson-Harris, who became Chancellor Richard Carranza’s top deputy in 2018. A month after her promotion, she assigned Spring to his role “leading mindfulness work,” the DOE said. He made $195,000 last year.

While Spring has repeatedly called himself the DOE’s “director of mindfulness” in speeches and interviews with yoga media, it was not an official title, officials said.

Spring formed a partnership with the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in the Berkshires, where he arranged to send 30 DOE executives on retreats. He also helped administer a $111,000 grant from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a yoga practitioner, to train Brooklyn educators in yoga and mindfulness.

In 2011, his faculty at the Bushwick high school drafted a letter to DOE officials denouncing his leadership.

“Over the past three years, Mr. Spring has devalued and disrespected experienced and successful teachers and staff, ignored EBC student’s academic needs, impaired learning, and isolated many parents and students,” it said.

The staff cited Spring’s 2010 policy to have parents sign a letter to allow the school to send students who misbehave or loiter in the halls home.

“Despite the guidance team’s concern that it could be dangerous for students to be out in the street unsupervised during school hours, that there was no tracking system in place to monitor the frequency of these dismissals, and other interventions that were suggested, this discipline measure was put in place,” the letter said.

The 2011 salutatorian, Marco Salazar, wrote in a student publication: “My school struggled to afford textbooks, and often two or more students would be left to share one between us. Our classrooms were overcrowded to the point where some of us had to stand, or sit on desks.”

Reached last week, Salazar recalled the school as “understaffed.” It offered no advanced classes in trigonometry, physics, and calculus, so he taught himself, Salazar said. A teacher paid for his Advanced Placement exams.

Spring “was putting blame on the teachers. None of the teachers liked him,” said Salazar, now a software engineer in Manhattan.

The DOE said EBC was a struggling school “in turnaround,” and the vote of no-confidence contributed to the decision to remove Spring in  2011.

“There was an understanding between the superintendent, Mr. Spring, and the school community that a leadership change was needed,” officials said.