New database reveals that DOE employs the city’s top earner

annals of transparency

January 6, 2009

New database reveals that DOE employs the city’s top earner

by Philissa Cramer, at 5:20 pm

It’s now possible to find out in just a couple of clicks how much any city Department of Education employee is paid, from the chancellor ($250,000 a year) to hourly school aides ($7.15 an hour, the minimum wage).

The Empire Center for New York State Policy, a project of the Manhattan Institute, today added New York City workers to its searchable database of state employees on SeeThroughNY.net, a site that aims to expose how state tax dollars are spent.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is the highest-paid city employee, taking home a quarter of a million dollars every year. Other top earners, with salaries of $196,575, include Jim Liebman, who heads the DOE’s accountability office; Eric Nadelstern, who runs the empowerment schools network; and Christopher Cerf, the chancellor’s deputy in charge of organization. Marcia Lyles, the top-ranking educator in the department, takes home $203,000. According to a summary provided by the Empire Center, more than 11 percent of full-time teachers draw salaries over $100,000.

The database can’t be used to find some information advocates have sought about DOE spending, such as how much each department of the central administration is allocated or how many people work in each department. Nor is the system perfectly up to date. (Terence Tolbert, who died in November, is still in the database, for example.)

Liz Benjamin, on her Daily News blog, explains:

According to Empire Center spokesman Lise Bang-Jensen, the database offers a snapshot of the city workforce as of June 30, 2008, the end of the last fiscal year, and represents the payroll of 85 agencies.

It includes base salaries, but not overtime, shift differentials and other extra pay. It does not reflect the latest round of municipal labor agreements, which increased the pay of many city workers by 4 percent this year, or any raises and promotions given to managerial employees over the past six months.

Still, there’s plenty of interesting information to be found for those who are willing to spend some time digging. I’ll be doing some digging of my own, with more posts to follow.

http://www.classsizematters.org Leonie Haimson

Jim Liebman actually draws two salaries this year — one, for his full time job as Law Professor at Columbia Univ., and the other salary from remaining head of Tweed’s Accountability Office. He wouldn’t say how much he’s being paid by Columbia when asked at the PEP; as for his other, supposedly part time job at DOE, all he would say is “under $90,000.”
Lisa Donlan

Not up to date?
I was suprised to see names of folks I thought had moved on some time ago- like Robert (Fair Student Funding ) Gordon and Jemina Bernard- on the DoE payroll list.
A portion of the thousands of centrally paid salaries must include the 1300 parent support staff described below. Parent coordinators and DFA’s appear to make the list but Community Superintdents don’t seem to.

We are thrilled to have Jemina R. Bernard join the New York City Team as Executive Director. A native of the South Bronx, Jemina oversees the New York City region, Teach For America’s largest with 1,000 corps members who collectively reach 60,000 students in more than 300 public schools per year. She joined Teach For America in 2007 after working for four years in the New York City Department of Education, where she was most recently Chief Operating Officer for the Office of New Schools. In that and other leadership roles in the department, she worked closely with Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott. She also managed a cross-functional team that closed six poor-performing high schools and replaced them with new schools, oversaw a parent-support staff of more than 1,300 people, and managed the launch of 34 Community and Citywide Education Councils. Jemina has also worked at Deloitte Consulting and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation. An alumna of Prep for Prep, she earned a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A from the Columbia Business School.
Sally Merlo

So, Mayor Bloomberg now wants to cut the budget of the DOE, and lay off 15,000 educators?

Doesn’t the Department have much to answer for, in terms of economic waste in management? It’s NOT the teachers that made these decisions, such as instituting the new ARIS system, which still is not up and running, spending untold amounts of money on books that students actually can’t read, spending money on “advisors” to provide “new” methods of education, and then not using the advice, employing testing companies to satisfy No Child Left Behind , etc.?

The list could go on….. If Bloombucks wants to cut waste, perhaps he should look at the people that are at the top rungs of the DOE, ask THEM to take a cut in salary, and in the name of transparency, ask THEM to explain what they have done with the budget of the DOE to make it more effective. Laying off teachers, many of them that are hard working, and truly caring about the students of this city have done nothing to deserve getting the ax to make up for the fiscal mismanagememnt of those at the top rungs of the DOE.
Sally Merlo

Apologies for the spelling of mismanagement- I am just SO angry that people like Bloomberg, who are so removed from the actual realities of what happens in the city classrooms are so cavaliar about the lives of students and teachers, that I typed too fast while composing my comment.
Anna Maria Moloney

I completely agree. The mismanagement at Tweed is undeniable and almost unbelievable. If they cared about students they would look at trimming the fat in many areas outside of the classroom. What about all the no-bid contracts that have been awarded to vendors, what about the 80 million dollars paid for ARIS, what about the SSO’s and all the costs they incur, while the support they give to schools is negligible? It seems to me as Klein and Bloomberg are crying wolf so that a.) they can scare the feds and the state into giving the DOE more funds b.) use the Contract for Excellence funds for purposes other than what they were intended for c.) score givebacks from the UFT and CSA, in the areas of healthcare and pensions.
Sally Merlo

Incidentally, WHAT has happened to the State lottery money that was supposed to be used to fund education?

Hmmmm……..

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annals of transparency

January 6, 2009

New database reveals that DOE employs the city’s top earner

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