Lorraine Grillo has been appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as President of the New York City School Construction Authority which manages new school construction and renovation of the city’s existing school buildings for the Department of Education. She has been serving as Acting President since April when then SCA President Sharon Greenberger was appointed by the Mayor and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein to Chief Operating Officer for the Department of Education. The announcement made today comes at a time when there is a lot of turnover taking place in the administration as Cathie Black is said to replace Joel I. Klein as Chancellor.

Grillo has been with the SCA for seventeen years, first starting as a Community Affairs Specialist in Queens and then serving as the Director of Community Affairs and the Senior Director of Community and Intergovernmental Affairs. In 2008, she was appointed by former President Sharon Greenberger to Executive Director/Chief of Staff to the President. In this position, she was responsible for an agency-wide reorganization and helped implement the 2005-2009 Five Year Capital Plan, New York City’s largest investment in school construction.

“We’ve succeeded in creating more than one hundred new school seats over the past eight years, in large part because of the reforms the SCA has adopted to bring down the cost of construction,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Creating new, modern school facilities is a cornerstone of our education reforms, and Lorraine’s strong leadership will allow us to continue building on the progress we’ve made.”

-Carolina Worrell