Before Mayor de Blasio cuts a dime from school budgets, he must scrutinize a Department of Education bureaucracy that has ballooned by 46 percent under his leadership, a City Councilman told The Post.
“Now that we’re experiencing the worst fiscal crisis in New York history, we need to take a serious look at DOE spending that, quite frankly, does not make a dent in the lives of kids on a daily basis,” said Councilman Mark Treyger, education committee chairman.
The mayor plans to slash the education budget by $827 million, including more than $200 million directly to schools for staffing, the arts and other unspecified programs.
Treyger said he’s planning a hearing to grill Chancellor Richard Carranza on the cost of his central administration at Tweed headquarters and at borough offices filled with supervisors and support staff.
“If you’re not working in a school each day, if you’re working in a field office, you’re not providing a direct service to students,” the Brooklyn lawmaker and former teacher said.
Among Treyger’s questions for Carranza:
- What do his nine executive superintendents do?
The chancellor created the new layer of bureaucracy soon after he took the helm of city schools in April 2018. The nine honchos, who oversee 31 district superintendents, each make salaries of more than $200,000. With health and fringe benefits, they cost nearly $3 million a year.
- How do students benefit from First Lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC?
The city program spends close to $10.5 million a year on school “consultants” based in borough offices. The consultants do not treat kids in crisis, but conduct seminars on mental health for staff or parents.
- How does Carranza justify his little-known Academic Response Teams?
The citywide program costs about $10 million a year. Several six-figure ART executives, including a principal removed from a Queens high school for poor performance, oversee nine directors who supervise some 56 “specialists.” Before classes ended due to the pandemic, the specialists spent two to three days a week for six to eight weeks coaching staff in schools where test scores are lagging.
- With an immense team of deputies and executives, why does Carranza need to spend $1.2 million on a two-month contract with Accenture LLP for “management consulting” on handling COVID-19 issues?
Figures compiled by the Independent Budget Office found that spending on central administration and district or borough offices skyrocketed from $489 million in 2014, when de Blasio took office, to $734 million in 2020.
That’s a total increase of $245 million a year, or 46 percent.
“There’s a lot of money still being spent on personnel who do not directly serve kids,” Treyger said.
The school budget cuts mean teachers, classroom aides, guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, principals, assistant principals, and others may be dismissed or displaced.
“These types of positions are now on the chopping block,” Treyger said.
Teachers union president Mike Mulgrew told a members’ town hall last week he expects tenured teachers to be “excessed,” meaning they will be booted from their schools but remain on the payroll as floating subs.
De Blasio ordered a DOE hiring freeze starting April 1, which will save $46.7 million, he projects.
Meanwhile, the mayor has said next school year must be “the most extraordinary in history” to help kids catch up on lost instruction and activities.
“Then he has the audacity to approve a budget that inflicts further pain,” Treyger said.
DOE spokeswoman Miranda Barbot said all layers of the DOE will suffer.
“Every dollar of the Department of Education’s budget goes to supporting students. Less than a third of reductions will affect school budgets, and the rest is from central,” she said.
But even with the cuts projected for both the central and mid-level borough bureaucracy, the amount budgeted, $614.3 million, is still $125 million more than in 2014, $489 million, according to IBO figures.