When Bill de Blasio campaigned for Mayor, he promised to improve financial transparency and accountability, which under Bloomberg had been highly deficient. He also promised a more independent and rigorous oversight process by the Panel for Educational Policy, which has a super-majority of Mayoral appointees. This has yet to occur. In certain respects, financial transparency has
actually diminished since the previous administration. Here are just some examples:
In its twice-yearly education budget briefings, the Office of Management
and Budget has informed Class Size Matters that the organization, as well as other education
advocates and representatives of the city’s unions, are no longer invited to
attend, only government officials.
The back-up documentation
for the proposed DOE contracts to be considered by the Panel for Educational Policy used to be posted by the DOE at
least a week in advance, and now are only posted the night before the Panel
meeting. This denies parents and advocates the information they need to flag questionable
contracts, see what the DOE’s rationale for them may be, whether they were
competitively bid, and if the vendors are under investigation or have other
issues that should be addressed.
Now,
only a brief three or four page document is available in advance, with merely
the names of the vendors listed, and little else.
Already, the lack of
information has proven to lead to unfortunate outcomes. Last month, the
PEP approved a new
contract for New Classrooms, run by Joel Rose, who developed its online instructional
program called School of One while he worked at DOE. This contract should not have been
approved due to conflict of interest concerns and also the fact that it
violated the terms of the previous contract.
When Rose’s previous
contract was approved in 2012, it was a no-cost contract and promised a
"free and perpetual license" to DOE to be used in NYC schools. Even then the contract was
very controversial. Now, however, his
company is charging the city $200 per student for the license.
After the PEP approved the
contract, the Daily News wrote about it on
October 19, with the headline: Ex-Education Department official’s $420K
contract violates ethics rules, critics say. I responded to the false
claims made by New Classrooms and the DOE in my
blog here.
Last spring, we FOILed the DOE
for the 2012-2013 audit of their spending of more than $600 million in Contract
for Excellence state funds. This audit
is required each year by state law, and was due Jan. 1, 2014, according to calendar
of the State Education Department. The C4E funding resulted from the
settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, and is meant to be spent
in targeted areas and help reduce class size -- the top priority of NYC parents -- but is instead being used by DOE to supplant city spending and fill in trepeated city budget cuts to schools.
As a result, class sizes have increased every year. On September 30, 2014, nine months after the
audit was due, the DOE responded
that this audit had not yet been “issued” so that “there are no responsive
records to supply.”
For at least two months, the PEP
contract committee had three or less members instead of the five members
required by
their by-laws. As far as I have heard, none of the PEP members have yet received
the six hours of fiscal oversight training required
by state law within a year of their appointment.
Panel members are responsible
for approving many billions of dollars in city spending, and millions of
dollars lavished on private vendors. It is their
duty to provide strong fiscal oversight, and not rubberstamp, as the previous
PEP did. In so doing, their members
should push for maximum transparency and accountability in the use of education
funds.
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