While The Schools Are Forced To Cut Their Budget by 5%, Tweed Just Continues To Increase Their Head Count.

The economic crises have forced the schools to reduce their budget by 5% for the Spring semester. No exceptions. However, the proposed 10% cut from the DOE outside the schools do not come from Tweed but primarily come from the District Offices or the Integrated Service Centers. In fact, the head count at Tweed has increased by almost 100 people since January of 2008 and 22% since October of 2004. Most of these increases come from the Office of Accountability, Budget, Legal Services, and The Chancellor's Office. How can Tweed justify increasing their head count while the rest of the DOE and schools must suffer cuts of between 5-10%? The answer is quite simple. It is because Tweed's bloated bureaucracy is not held accountable for their actions by the Bloomberg Administration. Interestingly, the only real reduction at Tweed is at the Deputy Chancellor's Office of Teaching and Learning where the staff has been reduced from 133 in 2004 to 23, the one office where education practices are actually understood.

The Daily News reported on how some of Tweed's programs saw an almost fivefold increase of bureaucrats while forcing the students to have fewer staff or services in the schools. That is unconscionable and just shows how much contempt Tweed has for the students in the school system, A graph by Gotham Schools also show the increase in the Tweed headcount while the Field Offices were forced to reduce staff.

While the school system suffers devastating cuts the Central Bureaucracy at Tweed just seems to keep increasing. "Children Last" continues.....