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Second bullet point is a big story. Many thought the City’s use one-time revenue shots to plug budget hole was unwise and just delayed the inevitable while pawning city assets. The inevitable is now — back to the layoff talk.

Looks like the schools are still being cut less than everything else.

And the inevitable is still coming.  I don’t think the Mayor wants to leave a mess to his successor, but I believe that is what will happen anyway.  We’re at 1972 in the 1970s timeline. 

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  But I don’t think the issue is insanity.  The results don’t matter if you’ve already left town.

The difference, however, is that similar things happened all across the country this time.  No where to run to baby.

Ah.  It’s the Mayor’s version of “Self-Deportation.”

“Does anyone have a tally of how much the DOE budget has been cut (annual sabre-rattling aside) under the Edumacation Mayor?”

For the first number:  According to the IBO, the City-funded portion of the DOE budget has gone from about $6.5 billion in 2002 to $7.5 billion in 2011.  (See http://tinyurl.com/8oow8cp.)  The overall DOE budget has gone from $16.2 billion to $18.4 billion.  Note that this excludes pension expenditures.

“More specifically, cut at the school level, Tweed and DOE central’s consultants aside.” 

This would be interesting to see.  I know you can pull up an individual school’s budget, and I know you can pull up historical data on that.  If there were a way to get those numbers aggregated, it would be an extremely useful way to look at expenditures (hint-hint, activists).  Other methods are messy.  You could just strip out the central admin costs from the DOE’s financial reports, but those costs are fairly small compared the budget.  And contracts don’t get put under the central admin category.  I’ve tried to track contract spending before — it’s tricky, but I think it’s doable, although I didn’t have the time to devote to it when I looked into it.  I also know transportation costs have exploded under Bloomberg.

Yet, sadly we still have the “financial pundits” on this board and their “expert” commentary on the cost of pensions. 
Oddly, we hear no mention of the fact that teachers contribute towards their pensions, a CONTRACTUAL agreement was made for the city to make contributions to pensions funds which it blatantly ignored (what, no accountability??), and the MILLIONS wasted on no-bid contracts, useless consultants, and wasted technology.
The shell game that is  the Bloomberg Era puts any 3-card Monte game on the street to shame and rivals the fraud perpertrated by the guru of Ponzi schemes, Madoff.
The TRUTH is that Bloomberg is a vindicitive failure whose only concern was union-busting and was never intended to help students or schools.  As his last gasp nears he will do everything possible to dismantle schools and destroy the infrastructure.  Yet, all we hear are the geniuses berating hard working teachers for expecting fair compensation.
If you wish to see the truth about teacher compensation, as opposed to the obfuscations posted here, read this:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/does-it-pay-to-become-a-teacher/

Does anyone have any idea how Dewey can be fixed? We all know it’s not John Dewey High School’s fault, it’s the corrupt DOE and Bloomberg’s fault.

It used to be one of the top schools (as mentioned in the article) along with Stuyvesant, why Dewey? It’s not fair. They should pay. I’d like to have Bloomberg give his billions in wealth to Dewey, and the other 24 schools that were innocent and wrongfully accused.

Don’t quote national discussions on pension issues when discussing NYC.  As I’ve noted, the blame for the problem is shared between inadequate taxpayer contributions and retroactive pension enhancements, with the relative harm from each varying from place to place.  Nowhere have the taxpayers put in more, and retroactive enhancements done more harm, than NYC.

In 2000 a deal was done to retroactively enrich the pensions, cut the teacher contribution from 3.0% of salary to zero after ten years (a 75% reduction over a career), and cut the taxpayer contribution for a year or two — so Giuliani would have a few dollars to throw around during his aborted Senate campaign.  NYC taxpayers have more than made up their share of the Giuliani deal many times over.  Meanwhile, employee contributions have been increased — but for new hires, who are once again screwed.

That is what happened.  In 2008, existing teachers were given the option to contribute 1.85% more, non-retroactive, to retire years early.  Those who were able to retire right away did so without having to pay an extra dime.  There had been similar pension “incentives” over the years.

Those are facts.

Speaking of contractural agreements, how come the unions didn’t object when Bloomberg started draining the money set aside for retiree health care so he could defer the devastation of services due to deals such as those above?  Shouldn’t that money have been reserved for its intended purpose? 

Under Bloomberg the DOE budget is dramatically higher due to sharp teacher salary increases … (2005 and 2009 contracts raised salary over 40%) – whether or not the percent of dollars versus network-Tweed dollars is more or less is difficult to assess … remember 32 district offices packed with political  cronies and six high school supes offices … since 2008 school dollars have decarsed – although no layoffs …

Michael — a bit more on this.  Check page 30 of the link below.  It’s the DOE’s “contract budget” for fiscal 2013.  Not historical, but a good snapshot of what the big contract spending is.  Basically, there are three eye-popping categories.  

First, “Prof Services — Direct Education Services,” at almost a billion dollars.  This is where the consultant billing happens.  You can download billing records at Checkbook NYC.  I just pulled down $835 million billed during calendar year 2011 (to 1,684 different payees), and it is truly mindblowing.  There is no possible way that the DOE can scrutinize this stuff.

Second, “Transportation of Pupils” — i.e., busing — at about $1.2 billion dollars. A huge driver of costs, involving contracts that haven’t been competitively bid since the late 1970s.  

Third, “Payments to Contract/Corporate Schools,” at a whopping $2.3 billion dollars.  ”Contract” schools are private schools that provide special ed services.   “Corporate Schools” are an enumerated a set of private institutions (mainly religious, it seems) that have been entitled to receive public education funds since time immemorial.  They get a heck of a lot of money and very, very little press coverage.

Everything else is small change compared to those three categories.  

http://council.nyc.gov/html/budget/PDFs/2013/040%20DOE.pdf