Deaths : N.Y.’s 1st Black School Chief Dies

Richard R. Green, the city’s first black schools chancellor whose much-heralded arrival last year from Minneapolis brought new hope to the nation’s biggest school system, died today of asthma-related causes. He was 52.

Green was brought to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center suffering from acute respiratory arrest and died 40 minutes later.

Green took over the troubled million-student system in March, 1988, after a long and bitter selection process that pitted him against the favorite of the teachers union.

As an outsider from Minneapolis, where he served seven years as school superintendent and was widely credited with turning around a failing system, Green offered hope for new approaches for a school system plagued with a high dropout rate, crumbling buildings and a politically combative hierarchy.

But he soon found himself contending with reports of drug abuse, theft and sexual misconduct by teachers, principals and school board officials. In response to the scandals, he suspended two community school boards.