Through
a Freedom of Information request and then a lawsuit, the NY Post finally received a list
of DOE Renewal administrators and field staff who work out of Tweed and
district offices. According to the list, there are 71 of these individuals with a collective salary last year of $8.4 million. See the attached
spreadsheet and NY Post article
here, in which I say that these schools are being buried in an avalanche of
bureaucrats.
Yet the DOE left off the list Renewal Superintendent Michael Alcoff,whose salary last year was $175,000, as well as the 39 Renewal
“leadership coaches” and three “Ambassador APs” for Renewal schools, whose
estimated salaries are at least $100,000 each.
When these educrats are added, the total cost of the Renewal bureaucracy
is at least $12.7 million.
This contradicts a report
released by the Independent Budget Office in May 2015, presumably based on
DOE data, that said only $200,000 was projected
to be spent in FY 16 and FY 17 for Renewal school “administrative field
support.” Quite a difference between
$200,000 and $12.7 million.
Last year, Ernie Logan of the CSA, the Principal’s union,
complained
that “principals in the 94 schools were being overwhelmed with paperwork
and meetings and micromanaged to the point that they could not do what they
thought was best for their schools.” Yet
what I think is most tragic is that so many of these schools are still
struggling with large class sizes, despite repeated promises by the city to the
state to reduce them.
Again, in their latest
round of Contract for Excellence proposed plans, the DOE claims to be
focusing its efforts on reducing class size in the Renewal schools, without any
specific goals or commitments, just as they did last year. Yet we found that last year, nearly 40 percent of the Renewal schools raised their average class size, and only seven percent
capped class sizes at the nearly acceptable C4E levels of 20 students per class in grades
K-3, 23 in grades 4-8 and 25 in high school.
As many as sixty percent of these schools still had classes as large as thirty. This is simply unacceptable. While millions are being
spent on a phalanx of bureaucrats, micromanaging teachers who are struggling to
help their students, students continue to struggle in classes this
large.
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