Klein proves to be mathematically illiterate -- again!

See the priceless piece in today’s Daily News, about how Comptroller Thompson sent a letter to Chancellor Klein, challenging him on his oft repeated claim of having saved $200 million from the bureaucracy, and another $290 million last year.

Klein responded by writing that Thompson’s letter “is riddled with errors." Only Klein’s own letter had a basic mistake in the math:

"If someone uses 100,000 gallons of gas at a price of $3.50 and then cuts back to 900,000 gallons, that is a real savings even if the cost of gas goes up to $4," Klein wrote, figuring the price rises to $360,000, not $400,000. The only problem is, by Klein's numbers, the price would actually go up to $3.6 million.

Here is an excerpt from the Thompson letter:

I have indicated previously that the Department appears to be engaged in a "shell game." This latest review does nothing to dispel that judgment. As I am sure you will agree, Exaggerated claims undermine the Department's credibility, and the withdrawal of critical information—such as the cessation o f school-based-expenditure reports-limits transparency and accountability.

As the City's budget is being formalized, it is critically important that accurate data be used to guide DOE decision making. I therefore, and once again, strongly urge your office to resume the publication of reliable school-based expenditure reports so that analysts and the public have a transparent view of DOE's efforts.

Clearly, wherever they made cuts, it wasn’t at Tweed, where wasteful spending, high salaries, and the headcount continue to grow each year.

And though the article says that Klein referred to the fact that “The Independent Budget Office pegged the savings at $221 million” the IBO also said they couldn’t confirm that this amount was redirected to schools, as the DOE claimed, and in fact, couldn’t figure out where the money was spent.

Here is an excerpt of an email to me in March of 2007 from George Sweeting, the deputy director of the IBO:

“We did conclude that there were substantial savings, but we also said that the available information made it hard to tell how much was redirected to the schools or elsewhere in the DOE budget. The difference between our numbers and the Comptroller’s result from assumptions about what to include as administrative savings. The analysis was described in our March 2005 report on the Mayor’s Preliminary Budget for 2006. http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/march2005.pdf; The discussion is on page 65 of the report (page 71 in the PDF).

There’s a follow-up on this controversy on NY1, with more comments from Klein, who added today that “he's working on new solutions to school overcrowding in difficult economic times.”

Please, Mr. Klein: tell us what they are; perhaps as in your letter, your can simply underestimate the thousands of students in overcrowded schools by a factor of ten.

More on school overcrowding and what should be done

Yesterday, the City Comptroller’s office released an excellent report on school overcrowding, focusing on certain “hot spots” in each borough, where a boom in residential development is overtaking school capacity.

It follows an analysis put out by the Manhattan Borough President a few weeks ago,that also showed how inadequate the DOE’s planning process is when it comes to our schools.

Yesterday's NY Times ran an article that describes the crisis of overcrowding that now exists in downtown Manhattan; though the same story could be written about neighborhoods in almost every part of the city.

Indeed, not a single school district in the city could achieve the smaller class size goals now mandated by the state and adopted by the city, calling for an average of 20 students per class in K-3 and 23 in all other grades.

This new Comptroller’s report points out that there are many policy levers that could be used to solve this problem, by providing incentives to developers to build schools along with new housing and office space. We are co-chairing a task force on school overcrowding, hosted by the Manhattan Borough president’s office – and we hope to devise some other practical solutions that can be used throughout the city.

Our experience has been that there are multiple ways of finding sites for schools and devising affordable ways to build them if people put their minds to it. By taking matters into their own hands, parents in Greenwich Village held meetings with a developer who has now offered the old Foundling Hospital on W. 17 St. for a new school in District 2.

This should not be the responsibility of parents but instead, the Mayor and the Chancellor, who have utterly failed to show leadership in this regard. Despite the fatalism often expressed, there is no reason that we could not eliminate overcrowding and reduce class size if there is the political will and commitment to do so.

Too often this administration has either claimed the problem did not exist, or said there were no good sites for schools, or, as the Mayor recently commented on his radio show, that New Yorkers didn’t want schools placed in their neighborhoods.

Rather than helping to solve the problem, the DOE has made it worse by putting new small schools and charter schools in existing school buildings; as each new small school eats up classroom space with office and cluster rooms.

See for example, the recent NY Times column by Sam Freedman about how the placement of small schools in Lafayette HS has led to an increased number of 9th graders, many of them extremely high needs, at nearby John Dewey HS, leading to safety problems and now threatening to overwhelm the school.

The administration has also been extremely slow in building new schools; see this graph of how many seats have been created over the last six years.

As a result, according to the latest Mayor’s Management Report, there has been a jump in the number of elementary schools that are overcapacity – 27% last school year, compared to 24.3% the year before.

Actually, using the DOE’s “target” definition that includes class sizes of 20 in grades K-3 and 28 in grades 4-8^th (which are still much larger than the city’s adopted class size goals), 48% of our elementary school students, and 63% of our middle school students are in schools over 100% capacity.

As Comptroller Thompson and MBP Stringer have now pointed out, the city’s next five year capital plan, to be released in November, must be far more ambitious than the last, if we are serious about providing NYC children with a quality education. We will have a petition online soon, urging the administration to do so.