Education Dept. Gives Details Of Plans To Cut $200 Million
The city Department of Education is following requests by advocates to "open up its books," releasing its most detailed outline yet of how it plans to trim a promised $200 million from its bureaucracy.
The figures, released in a spreadsheet yesterday, provide more information on the department's pledge that it will insulate schools from some budget cuts by trimming from its own coffers.
Some of the savings will reduce bureaucracy. Nearly 200 department employees — 187 to be precise — will lose their jobs. The department also plans to reduce spending on such things as computer repair costs and teacher-recruitment advertisements.
Other savings will have an effect on schools.
School officials said yesterday that, though they plan to work with schools to head off any impact, more than $27 million of the $200 million total cuts could be passed down to schools.
For instance, a move by the department to stop paying for computer repairs on machines that are more than five years old could mean that principals will have to take on the cost of repairs themselves.
They might be in the same position when the department moves to stop paying for the lunches of students who cannot prove they are entitled to free lunch, the department's deputy chief operating officer, Elyssa Siminerio, said.
Other cuts from the bureaucracy will affect educational services.
The department is cutting $10 million by deferring the purchase of hard-cover textbooks and by implementing a new social studies curriculum more gradually than had been the original plan.
It is also eliminating a family literacy program and reducing funds for an internship program.
Shown the spreadsheet, the president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said she is concerned that the proposed cuts might not pan out.
"Who is going to be sacrificed?" Ms. Weingarten said. "I would hope that there would be a commitment from the mayor and from Tweed that if they fail to make these cuts, then the city will absorb the cost."
