Chancellor Klein, Don't Cut A Dime

from classsizematters of 5/28/08
graph above from eduwonkette

Klein also admitted that his personal staff of 8 was costing $968,000 -
averaging $121,000 each, rather than the $1,117 total claimed in the budget submitted to the Council, and that the accountability office actually now has a head count of 97, rather than only 18 staffers, as was in the same document. The Chancellor added that there would be a substantial increase next year --$154 million - in the so-called "indispensable initiatives" of the administration, most of which were unspecified, but include even more new small schools, the Leadership Academy, etc. (By the way, this does not include the increased payments to charter schools - which have totaled
nearly $100 million more in funding over the last two years.) It was a difficult day for the Klein, who usually likes to wrap himself in the mantle of Martin Luther King and Brown Vs. Board of Education, as he tried to explain why he wants the state to change the rules so that the portion of its aid allocated through the C4E formula should be allotted to high-performing schools in the exact same ratio as struggling schools. He seemed to claim that with the highly-flawed "Fair student funding" formula
he's done everything necessary to help these schools -- and to narrow the achievement gap. Clearly this is an administration that has run out of new ideas - and run
out of excuses. There were hisses and boos from the audience throughout, and at one point, a large contingent of parents in the balcony started chanting "Chancellor
Klein, don't cut a dime," and were ejected by the guards.