Talk about ludicrous.
An NYC education official who moonlights as a rapper is collecting an eye-popping $192,374 principal’s salary despite not running a school, The Post has learned.
Caleb Haraguchi-Combs was a vice principal at BORO when he was selected in January to serve as “project director” for the proposed Next Generation Technology High School.
The appointment came with a $50,000 raise, bringing his pay to the principal-level salary. Project directors for planned schools typically go on to become principals once the schools open.
But Haraguchi-Combs’ proposed school — a Financial District campus focused on artificial intelligence and computer technology — was never approved or opened.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels scrapped the proposal in April following backlash over its merit-based admissions policy and broader concerns about the role of AI in education.
Haraguchi-Combs, 33, nevertheless continued receiving the hefty salary.
Public records show that he previously earned $141,960 annually as an assistant principal at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics in East Harlem.
A Manhattan Center official confirmed that Haraguchi-Combs no longer works at the school.
When The Post approached the educator this week outside his gleaming high-rise in Downtown Brooklyn, he declined to identify his current workplace.
“You came to my house? Outrageous,” he snapped at a reporter.
The DOE said Haraguchi-Combs is now “developing new proposals and supporting in-progress proposals,” a role commonly assigned to project directors whose schools have not yet opened.
But a DOE source strongly disputed that explanation.
“Unless a principal has tenure, they get bumped back to AP if their schools don’t open,” the source said, adding that officials “never should have named a principal before the school was approved.”
Because the school never opened and he never served as its principal, Haraguchi-Combs would not have been eligible to seek tenure in that position.
DOE insiders have criticized the arrangement as a waste of taxpayer money and questioned why Haraguchi-Combs could not have been assigned to another school.
“What was the plan? There’s a lot of schools that could use a principal, there’s opportunities to appoint principals since then, it’s a huge waste of resources,” the DOE source said.
The former principal’s unusual status was highlighted in an anonymous letter sent to DOE leaders by Manhattan high school principals calling for an investigation into Superintendent Gary Beidleman.
The October letter listed several concerns, including organizational dysfunction, the hiring of unqualified candidates, failure to meet class-size requirements and Haraguchi-Combs’ employment status.
Haraguchi-Combs also performs under the name Cal Combs and has released two rap albums. He describes himself as “half hip-hop artist, half English teacher.”
On his 2017 album “Carmel,” named for the Indiana city where he once lived, he rapped about a drug deal gone wrong and fleeing gunfire:
“So now I got a nine hidden in my backpack/I took all the things I learned and put them on backtrack . . . They said that they would meet us at the spot at seven thirty/we packed a bag and arrived five minutes early.”
In “Roundabouts,” he rapped about cocaine use and heavy drinking:
“One more bump on that key/one more drink and I’m free/one more shot to forget/ how much I hate me.”
Zilvinas Silenas, president of the good-government nonprofit think tank Empire Center for Public Policy, said Haraguchi-Combs’ generous salary was an affront to taxpayers.
“This is a new level for New York, when you are getting paid nearly $200,000 for a job you’re not doing, most taxpayers have never even dreamed of making that kind of money,” Silenas said.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Haraguchi-Combs took his wife’s last name and began his education career as an English teacher in Tokyo in 2015.
