Budget Crisis in the NYC Department of Education and Top Salaries

I promised to ask, so I will.

Carranza makes almost three times top teacher salary.

Many of his deputies make two times top teacher salary.

Top teacher salary is $124,909 a year. It’s more than double starting teacher salary, $59,291.

So why do the people at the top make so much? Especially, when you think about it, in an organization dedicated to teaching children, these are precisely the people who do not educate children?

Well, they do need to make enough to survive in NYC. The DoE pays paraprofessionals between $27 and $43 thousand. I guess the DoE thinks you can survive on $27k a year in NYC.

And, by the way, paraprofessionals perform important work, every day. (and if you want to complain about a paraprofessional you once knew who did not work very hard, I’ll trot out a dozen stories about paras who work their asses off doing work you would not want to do – and if you have a second story, I have a dozen more. Don’t go there). But if you ask me, ‘if Carranza couldn’t come to work for three weeks, which student would be lost without him?’ – is there a shrug emoticon? Because a para being absent is a big deal. A teacher being absent is a big deal. But if Carranza and his deputies took two weeks off, we would not notice.

But look, I can be reasonable. I’ve made an argument to fire the lot of them, but I’m not going to push in that direction.

Instead, in recognition of the severe budget crisis we are entering, with further cuts from the state possible, let’s look at reducing the pay of non-school-based personnel not working directly with children to say, 25% more than the top teacher salary. That’s $156k, rounded off. Still, a whole lot of money, almost 6 times a starting paraprofessional.

What would that save? Three million dollars? It’s just 1/10 of 1% of the budget. But the message would be clear. And not doing it? That message is clear, too.

What do you think?  Should this be a petition today? Or would it divert us from greater struggles? I am galled that three mil is being thrown away like this. But we have a lot of fights.

Should there be a petition to cap NYCDoE executives at 25% over top teacher pay?