Despite
a $5 billion deficit, ongoing service cuts and talk of possible layoffs, municipal
agencies continue wasting precious tax dollars.
The latest example of
fiscal mismanagement is the Board of Education's plan to hire more than 1,000
teachers to monitor students attending the federally funded summer breakfast and
lunch programs. Instead of using School Aides and Supervising Aides, who perform
that job during the regular school year and earn $12.33 and $15.75 an hour, the
BOE plans on paying the teachers $33.18 an hour to do the same work.
The union analyzed the costs and found that teachers would get paid $6,105,120
for the four-hour, 46-day food program compared to $2,268,720 for School Aides
or $2,899,840 for Supervising Aides.
In total, using the teachers will result
in overspending of between $3.2 and $3.8 million.
"This is crazy,"
said Veronica Montgomery-Costa, president of DC 37 and of NYC Board of Education
Employees Local 372, which represents the Aides. "This doesn't make sense
when the city has a $5 billion deficit. Teachers don't have any special knowledge
of cafeteria duty. Our people are trained for this."