Ricard Carranza, NYC Schools Chancellor, says he can’t cut the schools’ $34 billion budget. He says has has cut the budget “to the bone.”
“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….”
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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That is outright DISGUSTING!!!!!! There is plenty of FAT to CUT!!!
Kas Winters
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If I had a budget of $34 billion, I bet I could find some cuts before cutting the arts.
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There is an entire legal department, created by Bloomberg, and their job is telling principals they can do any golly goshdarn thing they feel like. I have brought black letter violations to grievances that take months, sometimes years to resolve. Often by the time we get to an arbitrator the problem is moot. I am not a lawyer but I can read and understand the contract. They could fire the entire obfuscation department, make the system fairer, and free up money for students. De Blasio’s worst shortcoming, except for closing Broadway and leaving the schools open, has been leaving Bloomberg’s middle management intact.
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can carranza sing mariachi telethon?
On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 3:23 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Ricard Carranza, NYC Schools Chancellor, says he > can’t cut the schools’ $34 billion budget. He says has has cut the budget > “to the bone.” Advocates don’t agree. “There is no fat to cut, there is no > meat to cut — we are at the bone,” Carranza testifi” >
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David Tokofsky, thanks for the big belly laugh!
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This is what I have recommended for particularly Ontario and all other Canadian schools. Nutshell – almost everybody working for a board that holds a teaching certificate, must teach full classes all day. If this happened, every class could be 15:1 ratio.
http://Www.thelittleeducationreport.ca
Works far better on a laptop or tablet than a phone.
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I like it, Doug.
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It is a deliberate attempt to destabilize, destroy, and privatize the district and the teachers’ pensions. It’s exactly what private equity firms do to profit by bankrupting companies that let those wolves inside. Corruption at its finest.
There will need to be more teacher strikes.
And yes, Mr Tokofsky, Carranza does look like a marionette, doesn’t he.
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I will start by saying that I absolutely agree that the contract with Accenture should be ended or at the very least, closely scrutinized with the DOE obligated to justify what the value added of those consultants is.
However, I am rather disappointed that there is no context given for this “1189 educrats” line without any context. Is that really a lot for a school system the size of NYC with over 1 MILLION (!) students?
Isn’t that fewer than one “educrat” for more than 900 students? Back when I attended high school some 35+ years ago, there was no obligation to children with disabilities, or ELLs or all kinds of special needs. And my high school had fewer than 900 students. And yet it was certainly typical that there was an Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent and likely all kinds of other “educrats” who arranged purchasing and busing and oversaw the buildings that I didn’t pay attention to in every community’s public schools.
Maybe I don’t understand what an “educrat” means.
The Bronxville K-12 school system has about 1600 students. If there are 2 “educrats” in that school system, is that too many? Should they only have one?
The superb Chappaqua school district has about 3,700 students K-12. Are there fewer than 4 “educrats” who oversee the various elementary schools, middle schools and high school?
Maybe these communities don’t have any “educrats” or only have 1 or 2. I absolutely concede that I am not certain who qualifies to be an “educrat”. But someone has to oversee the bus system, the buildings, the grounds, the purchasing of supplies, the payroll and benefit services, the school security, right? Are they “educrats” or not?
One “educrat” for more than 900 of the most disadvantaged students may not be all that many, but I don’t really know since I’m not sure which positions are “educrats”.
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“Educrats” are bureaucrats who don’t work in schools. The article says that their number has doubled since 2014. Carranza has beefed up the central bureaucracy.
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Educrats are people who either fled as fast as they could from the Classroom or who are making a fast buck edusplaining to us lowly teachers how much we suck.
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Check how many of Carranza’s deputy chancellors ever taught
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an essential understanding: so few of the rule makers have been inside the classrooms they endlessly blame
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He left HISD with similar bloat, albeit in a smaller level. But he also added quite a few central admin positions that didn’t really need to be there. It was already bloated before him, and it’s still that way now. I can only imagine with a much bigger budget how many more of those positions got approved or renewed in NYC.
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“There was no obligation to children with disabilities, or ELLs or all kinds of special needs.” Yeah Corey H and other mandates have increased the SPED ranks dramatically. As a Science teacher that modifies and accommodates my IEP students work, I think the same can work in reverse. I have had classrooms of 30-40 kids where IEP students are above and beyond the required threshold. A SPED teacher can teach kids with IEPs and those without.
In exchange, the paperwork and meetings schedule needs to be curtailed by a lot or cut altogether. Shelve the mandates, put these folks in GenEd. Each big city has their own large pool of teachers who already have small class sizes. It’s an easy balancing act if you can break the law. I also agree with Doug. Those middle managers need to explain their roles to a teacher panel. If it’s deemed not essential – back to the classroom you go! They’ll wish that they stayed principals lol.
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