Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza says students will suffer next school year because he can’t find anything more to cut in the Department of Education’s $34 billion budget. Insiders say he’s lying.
“There is no fat to cut, there is no meat to cut — we are at the bone,” Carranza testified Tuesday at a City Council budget hearing.
Education advocates and DOE staffers say his claim belies the bureaucratic bloat and bonanza of pay raises and promotions that have exploded during the tenures of Mayor de Blasio and Carranza.
“It’s just inconceivable there’s not waste in that budget,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. “Clearly there are more savings that can be made by cutting unnecessary contracts, consultants, and the mid-level bureaucracy, which has more than doubled in spending since de Blasio took office in 2014.”
City Councilman Joseph Borelli, a member of the education committee, said, “There is plenty of fat to cut without impacting what matters to students and teachers.
“The DOE has long been bloated and pumped money into pet projects, overpriced consultants, and progressive pandering,” the Staten Island Republican said.
The city has proposed $827 million in DOE cuts, including slashing school budgets by $285 million. This would reduce arts programs, counselors and social workers in needy districts, and college-prep for high schoolers. The DOE would also put off new classes for 3-year-olds, installation of air conditioners, and rat extermination.
“Students are going to feel bigger class sizes … the reduction in services, the reduction in enrichment activities,” Carranza warned.
Instead of slashing programs that impact students, critics say, the DOE should chop away at the vast array of high-salaried supervisors, consultants and contractors who do not work in schools or directly serve kids.
The DOE employs 1,189 educrats making $125,000 to $262,000 a year. All have desk jobs at Tweed Courthouse or in borough offices, records obtained by The Post show. Of those, 50 execs take home $200,000-plus — more than double the 21 at that salary level in fiscal year 2018.
That does not count Carranza, who collects $363,000.
Despite the army of six-figure supervisors, the DOE still pays high-priced consultants.
The DOE just inked a two-month, $1.2 million contract with Accenture LLP to advise the chancellor on school-reopening options, including a mix of classroom and remote learning.
Accenture staffers bill up to $425 an hour. That’s on top of another three-year Accenture contract costing the DOE $1.7 million a year for management advice.
The Office of School Wellness, under executive director Lindsey Harr, promoted 19 employees to supervisory posts over the past year — with pay hikes up to 45 percent.
Harr’s own salary ballooned $41,416, or 28 percent, to $189,041. She paid a consultant $19,000 to advise her on the reorganization.
In what a fed-up staffer called “favoritism,” Harr let two employees who were working part-time bump up to full-time. Their boosted salaries of $103,211 and $112,791 kicked in in March, just as schools closed and they could work from home.
“The timing shows that they are taking advantage of the system,” the staffer said. “They get a financial benefit during a global pandemic, while first-responders have to find help or send their kids to city-run child-care centers.”
Harr promoted another employee to “senior director of implementation,” making $185,944 a year. The DOE said she supervises a team of 45 who help schools meet PE and health-ed requirements.
The senior director of implementation, in turn, appointed four “directors of implementation” to supervise the 45 staffers — about 10 each. Three of the directors received 40-percent pay hikes to $110,419; the fourth makes $118,418.
Harr reports to LaShawn Robinson, deputy chancellor for School Climate & Wellness, who makes $229,787 a year.
First Deputy Chancellor Cheryl Watson-Harris, who sources say hopes to replace Carranza after de Blasio leaves office, makes $220,000 while overseeing an array of underlings that includes nine executive superintendents, each making $209, 476 a year. This new layer of bureaucracy created by Carranza costs taxpayers nearly $3 million a year.
Watson-Harris recently announced a new chief of staff, Melissa Harris, formerly chief executive of the Office of School Design and Charter Partnerships. She makes $194,573 a year and did not get a raise, the DOE said.
On March 18, after schools closed, Chief Academic Officer Linda Chen named a Director of Policy and Engagement, Judy Villeneuve, who received a $23,254 raise, or 21 percent, to $133,673.
Other recent promotions with raises include Recy Dunn, one of Carranza’s nine executive superintendents, became chief strategy officer in the Office of Field Support under Watson-Harris. He gets $213,976, and a staff of 17.
Flavia Puello Perdomo became chief executive of School Climate and Wellness, under LaShawn Robinson, in July 2018. With the promotional pay hike and mayoral management raises, her salary has risen from $179,098 to $198.161.
The DOE has instituted a hiring freeze, except for essential positions, but Carranza assured a parents advisory committee last week: “We haven’t laid off anybody. We haven’t reduced salaries.”
Many lawmakers don’t buy Carranza’s claim the DOE has cut “to the bone.”
Calling the planned cuts to schools “catastrophic” — and unnecessary — City Council education chairman Mark Treyger, a Brooklyn Democrat, in a May 1 letter to de Blasio signed by 33 fellow legislators, said the City Council “has identified hundreds of millions of dollars in potential savings in the Department of Education’s budget in areas that do not directly serve students, including consultants, duplicative administration, cancelled or unnecessary testing, and contract reductions.”
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DOE BLOAT
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza says classrooms will suffer from a planned $827 million budget reduction because “there is no fat to cut.” But DOE insiders say he should slash his increasingly bloated bureaucracy, which includes:
- 1,189 educrats making $125,000 a year and up, costing taxpayers $181 million a year.
- 50 administrators making more than $200,000 annually. Carranza makes $363,000.
- 340 positions added to the central administration and borough offices in 2019.
- A mid-level bureaucracy that has more than doubled in cost to $351 million under Mayor de Blasio.
- 191 educrats with desk jobs paying $125,000 and up in the Office of Teaching and Learning.
- 215 staffers with desk jobs paying $125,000 and up in the Division of Early Childhood.
- The Office of School Wellness, overseeing physical education and health programs, which promoted 19 staffers to six-figure supervisors in the past year, with raises up to 45 percent.
- Nine $207,559-a-year executive superintendents to oversee district superintendents — an extra layer of management created by Carranza costing $3 million a year.
- $35.5 million in for First Lady Chirlane McCray’s ThriveNYC mental health school “consultants” who don’t serve children directly.
- $19.6 million for Academic Response Teams with 16 administrators who oversee 58 coaches who pop into lagging schools to coach staff.
- $1.66 million annually to a private firm, Accenture, for management consulting, and a new two-month, $1.2 million contract for school-reopening advice.