Meet Caleb Haraguchi-Combs.
The New York City education official, who also records music as a rapper, is collecting an eye-popping $192,374 annual salary at the principal level despite not running a school, according to information obtained by The Post.
Haraguchi-Combs had been a vice principal in the city’s education system when he was selected in January to serve as “project director” for the proposed Next Generation Technology High School.
The appointment came with a roughly $50,000 pay increase, bringing him to principal-level compensation. Project directors for planned schools typically go on to lead those institutions as principals.
That plan fell apart, however. The proposed school, which was slated for the Financial District and would have focused on artificial intelligence and computer technology, was never approved and never opened.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels rejected the proposal in April following criticism of its merit-based admissions system and broader concerns about the role of artificial intelligence in education.
Haraguchi-Combs, 33, continued receiving the elevated salary anyway.
Before taking the project director post, he earned $141,960 annually as an assistant principal at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics in East Harlem, public records show.
An official at Manhattan Center confirmed that Haraguchi-Combs no longer works there.
When approached by The Post this week outside his luxury high-rise in Downtown Brooklyn, Haraguchi-Combs declined to identify his current workplace.
“You came to my house? Outrageous,” he told a reporter.
The Department of Education said Haraguchi-Combs is now “developing new proposals and supporting in-progress proposals,” a role sometimes assigned to project directors whose schools have not opened.
But a DOE source 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, Haraguchi-Combs would not have been eligible to seek tenure as its principal.
DOE insiders have expressed anger over what they view as a waste of taxpayer funds, questioning why Haraguchi-Combs was not reassigned to one of the city’s existing schools.
“What was the plan? There are a lot of schools that could use a principal, and there have been opportunities to appoint principals since then. It’s a huge waste of resources,” the DOE source said.
The unusual arrangement was highlighted in an anonymous October letter to DOE leadership from Manhattan high school principals who called for an investigation into Superintendent Gary Beidleman.
The letter raised a range of concerns, including alleged administrative dysfunction, the hiring of unqualified candidates, failure to meet class-size requirements and Haraguchi-Combs’ continued status.
Haraguchi-Combs also performs under the name Cal Combs, an alter ego who 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 escaping 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,” another track, he referenced 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 government watchdog group Empire Center for Public Policy, said the 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.
Haraguchi-Combs, who adopted his wife’s surname, began his education career as an English teacher in Tokyo in 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.