Sharon Greenberger

The city Department of Education is losing its top operations official and gaining a chief information officer in the latest spate of leadership changes announced today.

In keeping with a hiring freeze that Mayor Bloomberg has imposed on all city agencies, the department is filling all of the open positions with people who are already on its payroll.

Sharon Greenberger, who became the DOE’s chief operating officer in 2010 after heading the School Construction Authority for four years, is leaving to become a senior vice president at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She’s being replaced by the department’s chief financial officer, Veronica Conforme, who has worked at the DOE since 2003, and another DOE official is moving up to fill Conforme’s role.

Greenberger is the first top deputy to resign since Dennis Walcott became chancellor six months ago. Several top officials, including Conforme’s predecessor in the department’s financial operations, left during the tumultuous months between ex-Chancellor Joel Klein’s resignation last November and the resignation of his successor, Cathie Black, in April.

The department also announced that it has filled the chief information officer position that had been open since March. That’s when Ted Brodheim, the previous CIO, left and Greenberger launched a comprehensive review of the department’s technology department — shortly before news began to break about corruption among DOE technology contractors.

The CIO position had been advertised externally, but it went to Kemi Akinsanya-Rose, who helped lead the technology review after managing the city’s Race to the Top funds and other “strategic initiatives” at the DOE. She is currently participating in the Broad Foundation’s Executive Residency in Urban Education.

The department’s press release outlining the leadership changes is below.

CHANCELLOR WALCOTT ANNOUNCES THE DEPARTURE OF CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER SHARON GREENBERGER; VERONICA CONFORME, DOE’S CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, WILL ASSUME THE ROLE OF CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

Michael Tragale, Deputy Chief Financial Officer, named CFO; Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, Chief Deputy Counsel, will become Senior Advisor to the Chancellor and assume additional responsibilities; Kemi Akinsanya appointed Chief Information Officer

Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott today announced the departure of Sharon Greenberger, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Department of Education, who is leaving to become Senior Vice President, Facilities Development and Engineering at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Veronica Conforme, who joined the Department of Education in 2003 and has served as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) since December 2010, will take over as COO effective November 1st. Michael Tragale, who is currently the Deputy Chief Financial Officer, will be promoted to CFO.

“Sharon Greenberger has been a tremendous asset to the Department of Education, and before that, a phenomenal leader of the School Construction Authority,” said Chancellor Walcott. “It has truly been a pleasure to work side by side with Sharon over the past few years, and especially over the last six months that I have been Chancellor. I have valued and will miss her good counsel, her strong strategic vision, and her ability to build partnerships with so many supporters of our schools in the greater City community. Our loss is truly NewYork Presbyterian’s gain, and we wish Sharon the best of luck as she begins this new chapter.”

Sharon Greenberger first joined the Bloomberg Administration in 2002. She served as Chief of Staff for then-Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding Dan Doctoroff from 2002- 2005. She then briefly left the Administration to become Vice President of Campus Planning and Real Estate for New York University. Ms. Greenberger returned to the Administration in 2006, when she was appointed President and CEO of the New York City School Construction Authority. She served in that role until 2010, when then Chancellor Joel Klein appointed her COO of the Department of Education.

“Working with the Mayor and the Chancellor to help build and run our 1,700 schools has been the most extraordinary and rewarding experience,” said Ms. Greenberger. “I am grateful for all of the friends I have made along the way, and I have the deepest respect for our educators who work tirelessly to help our 1.1 million children succeed. I am sad to leave the Bloomberg Administration, but excited to take the skills I have acquired here and join NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to help families in an entirely different, but equally important way.”

Prior to serving as CFO, Veronica Conforme was the Deputy Chief Schools Officer for Operations in the Division of School Support and Instruction where she oversaw the day to day operational support to the district’s 1,700 schools and managed over 1,100 employees. She has held several other key positions since she first joined the Department, including serving as Chief Operating Officer for Empowerment Schools and the Deputy Director for Finance and Administration. In these roles, she oversaw the non-academic functions of the original 332 empowerment schools, led the restructuring of the 32 school districts, and managed business operations for Region 8. Prior to joining the DOE, Veronica was director of human resources at Columbia University Medical Center and, earlier in her career, held key financial roles in various non-profits.

Ms. Conforme was raised in the Bronx where she attended PS 114 and JHS 166 Roberto Clemente. She graduated from Murry Bergtraum High School in lower Manhattan. She holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Spanish Literature from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University.

“Veronica’s deep knowledge of both the financial infrastructure of the Department and our schools’ operational needs make her the ideal person to serve as our new Chief Operating Officer,” said Chancellor Walcott. “Over the past several years, she has proven herself to be a dedicated and respected leader within our organization. I am grateful that she has accepted this new challenge and confident that working together, we will continue to build on the progress we have made for our students.”

Ms. Conforme said, “I want to thank Chancellor Walcott and Mayor Bloomberg for this opportunity to serve New York City’s 1.1 million public school students. I grew up in the Bronx and am a proud graduate of New York City’s public schools, so I have a deep affection and respect for our education system. The Chancellor and I have a shared goal of ensuring that every child across this City has access to a high quality school, and I look forward to working with him in this new capacity.”

Chancellor Walcott also announced that Michael Tragale will succeed Ms. Conforme as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Tragale was appointed Deputy CFO in December 2010 after serving as Deputy Chief Operating Officer in the Division of School Support and Instruction. Mr. Tragale is a 25 year veteran of the Department of Education with expertise in financial management and operations after serving in a range of positions including in the Central Budget Office, Community School District Financial Offices, and the Regional Operating Center. Mr. Tragale received his Bachelor’s degree from Fordham University.

In addition, Chancellor Walcott announced that Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, the Chief Deputy Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Chancellor for Compliance Strategies, will assume the role of Senior Advisor to the Chancellor, working closely with him on a daily basis to help manage interagency coordination, the Office of Public Affairs, and strategic initiatives supported by the office of Family Action and Community Engagement. Ms. Jackson-Chase had previously been responsible for oversight of the general practice, commercial, disciplinary and special education legal units as well as the offices of special investigations and compliance services. A search for her replacement is underway.

Chancellor Walcott also announced the appointment of Kemi Akinsanya-Rose as Chief Information Officer (CIO), a position that has been vacant since Ted Brodheim’s departure from the DOE in March 2011. In her role as CIO, Ms. Akinsanya-Rose will be responsible for the planning and direction of major technology initiatives and ensuring their alignment with the Department’s overall goal of supporting and advancing student achievement.

Ms. Akinsanya most recently served as Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives in the office of the Chief Operating Officer, where she was responsible for implementation of the DOE’s central office performance management initiatives, conducting operational reviews, and managing the $269 million Race to the Top grant. She is currently completing her Executive Residency in Urban Education through the Eli Broad Foundation. Before joining the DOE, Ms. Akinsanya spent 14 years at American Express where she held various roles including leading a national customer service call center and launching an interactive online sales application. Ms. Akinsanya-Rose earned her Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and has a Master’s in Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business.

Just hours after the city released the latest round of high school rankings, Sharon Greenberger, the Department of Education’s chief operating officer, sent an email recruiting top-level deputies for an “all hands on deck” effort for the hearings, which could start as soon as this month and last through March.

“Be prepared to maintain a very flexible evening schedule in January,” Greenberger wrote to a small group of high-level deputies in Chancellor Joel Klein’s cabinet. She also asked each of them to designate several staff members to help at the hearings, which are required by state law when the city seeks to close a school.

Last year, the city held hearings for 19 schools that it tried to close. Many went late into the night, and the January meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, which had to approve the closures, finished at 4 a.m.

This year, the city has signalled that it wants to close even more schools. The high school progress reports released last week added nine more schools to the already record-high list of 47 schools that the city has said it might try to close.

City officials are also exercising extra caution about following the law that requires public hearings after a state appeals court blocked the 19 closures last year. The court ruled that the city had not properly followed procedures to alert communities about the possible closures. This year, the city started holding meetings at at-risk schools earlier, adding to the number of meetings and hearings that will need to be held before the closure process ends in the spring.

Greenberger’s complete email is below the jump. “Romy” is Romy Drucker, Chancellor Klein’s assistant.

From: Greenberger Sharon
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 5:08 PM
To: & Cabinet
Cc: Lopatin Adina
Subject: Assistance Needed

Through March, the Department will be highly focused on activities that are part of our school intervention process.  As I’ve mentioned to you before, this is going to be an all hands on deck effort.

Two things I wanted to let you know:

1. Romy will be managing the work to organize and coordinate Deputy Chancellor involvement in key meetings with struggling schools as well as joint public hearings.  She will be in touch with you and your assistant about the specifics but you should be prepared to maintain a very flexible evening schedule in January; some of you will be called on before then to participate in November/December meetings.
2. By Friday morning, please send Romy the names of 5-10 people in your division who can provide logistical support at important school meetings and hearings over the next few months.  The qualifications we are looking for are: good organizational skills, willingness to participate in meetings at night, ability to talk to parents.  We may need these people to volunteer as early as November 8^th. We will provide training to all volunteers.

Thanks in advance for stepping up.

Sharon

1:20 p.m. Education Committee chair Robert Jackson led off right away with the elephant in the room: the economy. He said the city is facing “very difficult economic times” and noted that the mayor has requested that all city agencies reduce their capital requests by 20 percent. Economic conditions didn’t stop Jackson from saying that the council wants to “take [the SCA] to task for unresolved problems and exaggerated claims.” In particular, he pointed to the authority’s claim that the current capital plan is the largest in the city’s history, noting that many more seats were created in the early years of the 20th century. Jackson also noted the Campaign for a Better Capital Plan‘s finding that more school seats were added in the last six years of the Giuliani administration than in the first six year’s of Bloomberg’s.

1:30 p.m. Kathleen Grimm, the DOE’s deputy chancellor for administration, drew some laughter when she read from her prepared testimony about the DOE’s recent “capital accomplishments” the departments’s oft-repeated claim that the current capital plan, which runs through the end of June 2009, is the largest in its history. She said in the future she’ll be specifying that it’s the largest plan in SCA’s history, not the DOE’s. The state created SCA in 1988.

1:45 p.m. SCA head Sharon Greenberger walked council members through a Power Point presentation about the proposed capital plan. She noted that the SCA did incorporate a plan for class size reduction into its calculations — but the reduction was to 28 students in grades 4-8 and 30 in high school, not 23 as the state Contracts for Excellence requires for those grades.

1:55 p.m. The economy rears its ugly head again. Jamie Smarr, head of the DOE’s Education Construction Fund, said he’s not focusing right now on developing new public-private partnerships to create more school seats. “My principal job is to keep the projects that we do have going through [the economic] contraction,” he said. Those projects, all of which are located in Manhattan’s District 2, include the PS 59/High School for Art and Design building whose plans were released in October.

2:10 p.m. Picking up on what’s clearly becoming a theme, Jackson and Grimm argued about the class size targets used in developing the capital plan. Jackson asked when the DOE and SCA will adopt the class size targets required by the state. Grimm’s answer: Never. “When we look at our targets and factor in the actual utilization of these classrooms … we really do arrive on a citywide level at targets that are 20 or 21,” she said. In other words, Grimm said, classes can get down to the size the state requires even if the city doesn’t build more school seats than it already plans to. Jackson didn’t buy Grimm’s logic. “Those numbers are not acceptable to me as the chair, to advocates, or to parents,” he said. “What they really mean is that children will be in overcrowded classrooms.”

2:20 p.m. Has anyone ever made a joke about Kathleen Grimm’s name? She certainly lived up to it just now when she responded to a question about school construction costs. “It is a very expensive proposition,” Grimm answered. “That’s why we are trying to use every tool we have to address overcrowding in our schools, so we don’t have to rely on capital dollars. We don’t have enough.”

2:25 p.m. Jackson has turned the floor over to his colleagues on the council. Most of them are asking about overcrowding issues in their own districts. Judging from their questions, if overcrowding is only a local problem, as the DOE says it is, it seems to affect a lot of localities.

2:40 p.m. It’s return of the light bulbs here in the Council Chambers! Last week during a hearing on the DOE’s proposed budget reductions, Council Member Lew Fidler said the city should cut costs by switching to energy-efficient light bulbs. Now Fidler said the situation is worse than just wasteful: Many schools don’t even have the fixtures to accept energy-efficient bulbs. Grimm said the current plan provided for fixture modernization but that the initiative had been cut back.

3:05 p.m. The subject has turned to Transportable Classroom Units, otherwise known as trailers. In the current capital plan, the city said it planned to removed all TCUs by 2012. But the proposed plan calls for removing trailers on an ad hoc basis only. Fidler said the change amounts to “waffling” by the DOE and SCA. But Grimm said the agencies are only responding to what principals want. “No TCU will need to be used for classroom space when the projects are completed,” she said. “But if a principal wants to keep them, and we say they’re safe, we’re not going to stop them.”

3:20 p.m. Randi Weingarten is in the house, offering testimony that she said is influenced as much by her new role as the head of the national teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, as by her long-term experience in New York. She said the proposed capital plan “thinks small” and could hold New York City back if federal funds become available to stimulate local economies. I’ll have more on this later.

Weingarten’s testimony received a full-on round of applause in the usually staid chamber. One person who didn’t clap, but who wished he could have: Fidler, who said if it weren’t for the rules that bar council members from applauding, he would have been on his feet.

Weingarten also joined the list of people testifying that they are concerned about the SCA’s class size targets. The SCA’s planning “does seem to take aim” at the state’s class size goals, she said.

3:30 p.m.: The only actual New York City public school student in the room has taken the stand. Robert Moore, a 16-year-old student who attends the Bushwick School for Social Justice, testified on behalf of Make the Road New York, a community organization. He said his analysis showed that there aren’t enough ninth-grade seats in Bushwick to hold all of the neighborhood’s graduating eighth graders. “All students should have a choice to go to school in their community,” Moore said.

3:35 p.m. Leonie Haimson, the tireless advocate for smaller class sizes and one of the authors of the Campaign for A Better Capital report, could only address a handful of the issues outlined on her prepared testimony during her allotted time, but that was enough to for her to run through a litany of problems with the capital plan’s methodology, assumptions, and conclusions. She said the DOE and SCA are perpetrating “a huge deception” when they say overcrowding is merely a local problem, citing a survey her organization, Class Size Matters, conducted earlier this year that found that 86 percent of principals say large classes at their schools prevent them from providing a quality of education. Robert Jackson funded that survey.

Asked how much it would cost the city to reduce class sizes to the level CFE requires, Haimson said the answer — many billions of dollars — sounds “very scary.” But she said there are a number of ways to find the funds, from increasing the DOE’s share of the city’s capital spending from 13.8 to 20 percent (in keeping with its historical share) to halving the projected increase in charter school enrollment.

And about the Grimm’s explanation of why schools can still have small classes without the DOE and SCA reducing class size targets, Haimson said, “It makes no sense if you read it [in the capital plan] and it made no sense to me today.”

3:50 p.m. The tail end of this hearing reminds me of how many people have put in long hours trying to crack the problem of overcrowding. Dan Golub, the land use specialist at the Manhattan Borough President’s office, described his office’s two recent reports about how school construction isn’t keeping pace with residential construction. And he emphasized that the economic downturn shouldn’t stop new construction, as scary as it is. “We can’t plan for just the current economic situation,” he said.

4 p.m. There are a few people still hanging around to testify, but most council and audience members have left. I don’t blame them — this has been a bummer of a hearing, with testimony alternating between financial defeatism and complaints that the DOE and SCA aren’t planning to build as many schools as the city needs.

Sharon Greenberger

When several families arrived at a Park Slope middle school for an evening basketball practice recently, they were surprised to find themselves locked out. The gym, they learned, had been closed without warning so that construction workers could make repairs. The basketball team couldn’t practice, kids were disappointed, and parents were frustrated.

Most parents would chalk the experience up as just one of the many small injustices of family life in the city. But for Sharon Greenberger, a Park Slope resident and mother of two, it was a professional learning experience.

Greenberger leads the city’s School Construction Authority, the agency that oversees the building of new buildings and the repairs work for the old ones. In recent years, that has become a daunting job. More and more children are being brought up in the city, leaving parents distraught that public school buildings might not have enough room to fit them. At the same time, the city’s aging stock of school buildings — most are at least 90 years old — has required extensive repairs. Greenberger is the woman charged with balancing demand for new schools against the need to maintain old ones, an acrobatic challenge that has only gotten harder as grim fiscal realities set in.

A starting goal she has set for herself since becoming president of SCA in 2006 is to improve communication. Reflecting on the canceled basketball practice, she said, “Had we [at SCA] figured that out and communicated it more effectively, it would have made a difference.”

Headquartered in a massive building that overshadows its Long Island City block, SCA in the not-so-distant past earned a reputation for corruption and opacity. But Greenberger, who like many top city officials is perpetually attached to her Blackberry, said she’s tried to bring more transparency to the agency. Under her watch, SCA has taken advantage of its Web site, publishing annual reports that used to be relegated to Community Board meetings directly online.

Greenberger’s degree is in design and urban planning, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But she also has a background in city politics. Before working at the SCA, she had perhaps the only other position that is equally politically prickly, directing New York University’s campus planning during a peak of its aggressive expansion within the city. Before that, she served as chief of staff to Dan Doctoroff, then the deputy mayor for economic development.

She said the lesson from those jobs was that an organization can’t be effective if it isn’t organized well on the inside. Under her supervision, the agency has gone through a complete internal review that has resulted in departments working together more effectively, she said.

Greenberger said this is the kind of work she loves: the operations side, implementing systems that “make sure we deliver what we’re supposed to.”

That’s fortunate, because SCA has spent the last four years barreling through a capital plan that promised to add 63,000 seats and included repairs at hundreds of schools. This past September, the agency completed 18 new school buildings, more than in any other recent year. “The volume of work and the quality at which we’ve performed it has really been extraordinary,” Greenberger said.

But the current economic crisis requires a slowdown in the pace of school construction, according to city officials. Last week, the city released its plan for school construction in the years 2010 to 2014, and it calls for only 25,000 new school seats and nearly $2 billion less in spending on capital projects.

Slowing down could be hard for Greenberger. Like a true perfectionist, Greenberger says the biggest downside of her job is having to disappoint people. Over the summer, she clocks 14-hour days as she supervises construction projects at hundreds of schools. Beginning this month, she’ll be spending at least a couple of nights each week appearing at meetings of Community Education Councils in different districts to discuss the new capital plan.

At those meetings, Greenberger is likely to hear from SCA’s vocal detractors, who have criticized the agency for everything from the number of seats it plans to build, to where it plans to locate new schools, to the way it reviews environmental conditions before breaking ground.

How does Greenberger handle the criticism? “I have a golden rule, and that’s that you can’t take anything personally,” Greenberger said. That’s a lesson she said she learned during her time at NYU and at City Hall.

Greenberger also draws a line between home and work. “Because I work so hard during the week, their schedules rule the weekend,” she said of her daughters, who attend MS 447 in Boerum Hill and Park Slope’s PS 107, from which her lawyer husband also graduated. Together, the family visits museums, attends sports events, and eats unusual foods in neighborhoods such as Koreatown. “They’re very good eaters,” Greenberger said about her daughters.

Being a mother gives Greenberger a special insight into how her work affects public school parents. And being a woman in a male-dominated field makes her sensitive to the issues faced by minority contractors who compete for city dollars, she said. Still, in an industry that has been slow to change, “people are surprised that I have this position,” Greenberger said.

But it’s getting schools built, not the barriers she’s broken, that makes Greenberger proudest. “The agency is delivering, and that speaks better than everything,” she said.

In the opening salvo of what’s sure to be a pitched battle over the next capital plan, activists today released a report (pdf) concluding that the city added fewer school seats during the first six years of the Bloomberg administration than it did during the six years immediately before. They estimate that the system needs  167,000 extra seats and dramatically accelerated school construction in order to ease crowding and reduce class sizes.

The capital plan is a budget outlining all public school construction plans for the next five years. The current plan covered five years and will end in 2009. The School Construction Authority is due to present a first draft of the next capital plan, covering the years 2010 to 2014, in just a few weeks.

In the report, released by the Campaign for a Better Capital Plan and written primarily by Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, backers of the campaign call for “a transparent, thorough, and open system of planning” that reflects the system’s real space needs.

A partial list of the report’s recommendations, which are targeted at the Department of Education and SCA:

• Look at information about births, residential construction, and preschool enrollment when projecting how many school seats will be needed. (Right now projections rely primarily on past trends.)
• Allow schools to reclaim specialty spaces they have converted into classrooms to deal with overcrowding. (Across the city, art, science, and music rooms have all been converted into classrooms.)
• Incorporate class-size reduction goals the city has set into estimates of each school’s capacity.
• Visit schools to see how much space they really have and how it’s being used.
• Streamline the city’s process for getting and approving new school sites, which is now long and expensive.

The 167,000 seats that the report says are needed are nearly three times as many as are being created during the term of the current capital plan.

Asked about the report this morning at the launch of the Research Alliance for New York City Schools, Chancellor Joel Klein defended the current capital plan, which he called “the most robust capital plan the city has ever seen.”

SCA President Sharon Greenberger told me this morning that she hadn’t seen the report before it was released today. But in general, she said, the SCA builds school seats safely and on time but simply can’t meet all of the city’s needs at one time. “Managing expectations” is a major component of her job, she said. “People want more than we can deliver.”