CITYWIDE

COMPTROLLER’S OFFICE TO AUDIT EDUCATION DEPARTMENT FIGURES

The state comptroller’s office will audit the Department of Education’s data on class size after a report by the Independent Budget Office contradicted information presented by the Department of Education, a spokesman said yesterday.

A report on average class sizes released by the city’s Independent Budget Office in July showed an increase in the last two years for city kindergartens, questioning the validity of the Department of Education’s numbers, which showed the number of children in kindergarten had fallen. This discrepancy prompted elected officials and advocates of smaller class sizes to ask the comptroller to audit the Department of Education’s data. A spokesman for the comptroller’s office, David Neustadt, said the audit will begin shortly and would take between five and six months to complete.

In the last fiscal year, the state and city allocated $135 million to reduce class sizes from kindergarten through third grade. The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, Council Member Robert Jackson, and state Senator Eric Schneiderman, who raised the issue yesterday at a press conference, stopped short of saying the Department of Education had misappropriated the money, preferring an audit by the comptroller to clarify the results. Advocates said a difference in methodology may account for the different numbers. The IBO found the average class size for kindergarten through third grades increased in 15 school districts while falling in 14 in the last year. All 34 school districts have reduced their class size by an average of almost four students a class since 1998, according to the IBO analysis.

– Special to the Sun

CAMPAIGN FINANCE BOARD HOLDS HEARING ON ‘PAY TO PLAY’

The city’s campaign finance board is holding its first hearing today to examine so-called pay to play contributions or donations made to political candidates from individuals or companies who do business with the city. Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire who spent $74 million of his personal fortune on his 2001 election, argues that the donations should be banned and that the campaign finance board needs to fulfill the referendum that voters approved in 1998 calling on the board to regulate and publicly disclose those contributions. The chairman of the board, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., said in the past the board did not have any practical way of electronically identifying specific contributions. More recently, however, the board said it was working with the city’s Department of Information and Technology and Telecommunications to develop a system to do just that. Today’s hearing could be a significant step in changing the way the public can search information on who donates to which candidates.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE BLOTTER

THREE DIE IN QUEENS FIRE

Three men living in a Queens row house were killed and three others critically injured in three-alarm fire early yesterday morning, fire officials said. At about 6 a.m., firefighters arrived at 88-28 162nd St., a two-story row house in the Jamaica section of Queens, where flames and smoke were billowing from the home’s windows. Officials said the firefighters discovered the bodies of Dharvindranaoth Seunarine, 43; Warren Rubino, 34, and Wladyslaw Gnojski, 48. All were fatally injured. The names of the injured were not released, but they included an 11-year-old boy, a 44-year-old woman, and a 44-year-old man. Four firefighters also suffered minor injuries. No criminality is suspected, although an investigation is ongoing, a spokesman for the Fire Department, Tim Hinchey, said.

– Staff Reporter for the Sun

POLICE SAY WORKER SERVED BURGER WITH GLASS SHARDS

A teenage Mc-Donald’s employee was arrested for assault in the Bronx after he allegedly served a police officer a Big Mac stuffed with shards of broken glass, the police said. Albert Garcia Jr., 18, was charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal possession of a weapon after a uniformed officer with the city’s Canine Unit chomped into his burger late Saturday night and bit down into the glass. The police officer chipped a tooth and suffered several cuts to his mouth, throat, and stomach as a result, police said. He was treated and released at Long Island Jewish Hospital.

– Staff Reporter for the Sun

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