Public Employee Press

Contracting out wastes millions as schools lay off workers

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

With mass layoffs looming, the new Panel for Education Policy voted Sept. 14 to renew a $54 million no-bid deal with a computer consultant on a project that civil servants could do at a lower cost.

The Dept. of Education contract with Future Technology Associates to upgrade computer systems includes $250,000 apiece for 63 FTA computer consultants — as much as Schools Chancellor Joel Klein gets.

Meanwhile, DOE went ahead with its plan to lay off about 600 modestly paid school workers by Oct. 16. Almost all the targeted employees were members of Board of Education Employees Local 372; the hit list also included 14 computer workers in Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627.

“The department’s action is a disgrace,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “They are callously and needlessly casting workers into the street at a time of high unemployment.”

DC 37 officials and Local 372 members at the Sept. 14 meeting denounced the panel for rubber-stamping the FTA deal and other wasteful contracts, including an agreement for marketing services with Octagon Inc.

Comptroller William P. Thompson — whom DC 37 has endorsed for mayor — criticized the original Octagon contract, which gave Snapple vending machine rights in city schools. Speakers also condemned an $860,000 contract with Morrison Consulting Inc. to maintain computer systems for student attendance and security.

An addiction to contracting out

“We believe the Department of Education is wasting millions and millions of dollars,” said DC 37 Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido.

“We have 14 computer workers about to be laid off,” Garrido said. But DOE seems “addicted” to allowing excessively paid “outsiders” to do the work of civil servants, he said. The FTA employees cost the department at least double the compensation of the Local 2627 members who work there, according to Garrido.

The school panel is a reconstituted school board established under a new state law reaffirming mayoral control over the public schools. Bloomberg’s eight appointees were among the 10 panelists who voted for the contract. Panel members Patrick Sullivan and Gbubemi Okotieuro, appointed by the borough presidents of Manhattan and Brooklyn, respectively, voted against the contracts, while Bronx appointee Anna Santos abstained.

City Council member Robert Jackson criticized the panel for restricting public participation by setting a cutoff time for signing up to speak.

Local 372 School Aide Chaira Salem said she’d just learned that day about the pending layoff of 550 School Aides.

“When you make decisions for these contracts, please be aware of the impact,” she said, noting that the layoffs will devastate the lives of the affected part-time workers, who typically earn about $17,500 a year, and will eliminate vital services for schoolchildren. “It baffles me that millions will be spent on contracting out what members do.”

“We should get our priorities straight,” said Local 372 member Gregory Hutchins, a Substance Abuse Prevention and Intervention Specialist.

A foolish practice

The layoffs include 55 SAPIS workers. Hutchins said that even though the state cut its funding for SAPIS counselors, DOE should have been able to come up with $2 million to save the positions.

As the panel hearing went on in school headquarters at the Tweed Courthouse, Roberts and Thompson met with the media outside to blast the layoffs and call for the city to curb its wasteful spending of more than $9 billion a year on contracting out.

“It is simply foolish for the department to pay consultants twice as much as our members, when we can do the job for half the cost,” Local 2627 President Robert Ajaye said.

“These contracts are a striking example of the enormous waste at the Department of Education,” Local 372 President Veronica Montgomery-Costa said. “The school panel seems not to care about the human pain and loss of services that will result from its misguided decision.”