CARRANZA SAYS THERE IS NOTHING AT DOE LEFT TO CUT

I know full well that Chancellor Richard Carranza was protecting his people when he made this statement to the City Council on Tuesday as reported by Sue Edelman in the NY Post:

“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.

Okay, everyone have a good laugh. When you have finished guffawing, let's get back to Sue.

“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.”

Examples:

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.

There's so much more in the piece but I don't want to just repeat it. I think we should add to it.

Can any of you find some fat in the DOE budget?

There is the obvious bloat of a school with around 500 kids having two assistant principals or the coaches who do pretty much what the assistant principal does. Then, there are the Quality Review people who waste school time reviewing schools where the superintendent already reviews the school to rate the principal. Even more obvious are the 300 lawyers who just go after educator jobs. When it was the Board of Education, they had far fewer attorneys and they still managed to run a grievance process against us.

Your suggestions to help Carranza out please ladies and gentlemen.