Mamdani’s shortlist for ACS head includes agency ‘abolitionist’ – NBC New York

A look at two finalists on the Mamdani administration’s shortlist to lead the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) suggests the agency — charged with protecting children from abuse and neglect — could be headed for big changes. 

Senior Mamdani administration officials confirmed an additional round of interviews would be underway over the weekend, as they zero in on two leading candidates who have criticized ACS for causing disproportionate harm to families of color. 

Both candidates are attorneys with experience representing parents accused of abuse or neglect. And both are Black women who have railed against a system they say separates too many Black mothers from their children based on unproven allegations.

One of the finalists, Angela Burton, has repeatedly described ACS’s child protective services unit as “the family police” in social media posts. During a podcast appearance in January, Burton referred to herself as “an abolitionist” — a reference to her repeated calls for ACS to be abolished.

A high ranking City Hall source with knowledge of the administration’s thinking confirmed that Burton is under serious consideration for the post, along with Michelle Burrell of Queens Legal Services, who appears to have voiced less public criticism of ACS than Burton but has compared the agency’s practices to stop-and-frisk policing.

Burton’s candidacy in particular has caused some alarm in the city’s child welfare community, according to multiple sources familiar with the hiring process who spoke with NBC New York on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be perceived as interfering with the mayor’s process. Among the concerned stakeholders: current and past ACS staff, caseworkers (a majority of whom are women of color), elected officials, not-for-profit foster care agencies and members of Mamdani’s own transition team.

The sources said the Mamdani administration had been made aware of concerns that the quality of child safety investigations and worker morale might erode under a commissioner who has called for ACS to be defunded and abolished.

Abolishing ACS is not something Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed, nor is it clear that it could happen.  New York State Law requires that local counties conduct investigations into all reports of child abuse and neglect within 24-48 hours and make ongoing determinations under the supervision of the Family Court about the safety of children on their radar. 

In 2021, Burton co-authored an article calling for “monetary reparations for generations of violence against Black families.” The article, published in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law draws a “connection between American chattel slavery and the present system of child-taking,” arguing that the child protective system punishes poverty as if it is neglect. 

In December, Burton recommended a reorganization that appears uniquely tailored to the Mamdani administration’s priorities. The 5-page plan — shared with the Mamdani team, according to sources, and obtained by NBC New York — suggests shifting some community based services for families away from ACS and into Mamdani’s proposed Department of Community Safety. 

The proposal would create an “Office of Family Well-Being” within the DCS, arguing that involvement with ACS “too often surveils, disrupts, separates and destroys families” instead of connecting them with help. 

“A public health approach to family well-being can reduce crisis intervention and family separation,” the report says, suggesting that millions of dollars in cost savings from reducing ACS cases could be invested to support families.

Mayor Mamdani has not said whether he supports this idea. He has largely pitched the Department of Community Safety as an alternative to having the NYPD primarily respond to mental health concerns.

In a 2023 magazine interview, Burton is quoted as saying she was terminated from a job with the New York State Court system because they did not want her to testify publicly about what she viewed as “the racist roots of the family policing system.” 

How the other leading contender, Burrell, might manage ACS is less clear.

In a 2019 article for the CUNY Law Review, Burrell drew the analogy that child welfare investigations are to families of color what stop and frisk policies have been to Black and brown men.

“I have believed for a long time that the child welfare system needs its own ‘stop and frisk moment’ — a broad-scale moment of public awareness that communities of color are being investigated by child welfare agencies unjustly,” she wrote.

In Burrell’s article, she asks “How is it that so many Black and Brown women are being trusted to care for white children as domestic workers, yet every day in court I have witnessed an inherent distrust of Black and Brown women’s ability to rear their own children?” 

Burrell says there is a false presumption that removals of children to place them into foster care “are always justifiable and in the best interests of children.” She argues the misconception is fueled by media focus on the relatively few investigations that involve child deaths. 

According to the most recent publicly available data on fatalities of children known to ACS, the number declined from 10 in 2021, to 9 in 2022, to 8 in 2023.  But after some more recent deaths of children despite ACS involvement, the agency has been slammed by critics and the New York Post editorials for placing racial justice over child safety.

The Administration for Children’s Services has attempted in recent years to make it easier for families to get support without triggering child abuse investigations. Steps have included a new process known as CARES where reports involving children not perceived to be in immediate danger are diverted from a full investigation.

ACS has also retrained so called mandated reporters — for instance, school officials required to report suspected neglect or abuse — on when they should or should not call the state’s child abuse hotline.   

Current ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser, who recently submitted his resignation to Mayor Mamdani and plans to leave his job early next month, declined a request to be interviewed by NBC New York about the search for his successor. 

Under Dannhauser, who has served as commissioner since 2022, there are currently fewer than 6,400 children in foster care — the lowest number in decades, according to city data. In 2025, caseworkers were also carrying fewer cases (an average of 6.9 each), down from more than 10 in 2023 and way below the national recommendation of 12. 

Dannhauser has never called for the abolition of ACS, but he did co-found a working group called Narrowing the Front Door to NYC’s Child Welfare System, which has advocated ways to limit unnecessary investigations and address the reality that the vast majority of the agency’s cases involve children of color. Burton’s five-page proposal to shift programs from ACS to DCS credits the Narrowing the Front Door Group with leading the vision for family well being. 

Dannhauser has cited research showing nearly one in two Black children in NYC will have become the subject of an ACS investigation by age 18. The New York Post referred to Dannhauser as “a woke white guy” but some sources are concerned ACS could end up with a way more radical successor.  

Currently, about 3,000 children a year are found to be facing circumstances dangerous enough that caseworkers and family court judges decide to place them in foster care, according to city data.

Case law in New York state says that the trauma of removing a child is significant enough that the risk of removal must be weighed carefully against the risk of leaving the child at home.

A City Hall official familiar with the hiring process told NBC New York that “ideology is not the most important factor” in choosing the next ACS commissioner, noting that management experience will play a key role. 

The official said that a range of candidates had been interviewed or approached, including current ACS Deputy Commissioner for Family Services Luisa Linares, and Kimberly Watson, who runs Graham Windham — one of the oldest and largest foster care agencies in New York. Two sources familiar with the process said Watson told the Mamdani administration she was not interested in the job.

Notably, while Mayor Mamdani called for the NYPD to be “dismantled” several years before seeking office as mayor, he did not hire a police commissioner critical of the New York City Police Department.  With Commissioner Dannhauser about to depart on March 2, administration sources say they expect to announce a successor soon.