Over 80,000 NYC School Pensions Added to SeeThroughNY
Pension payment data for 81,411 New York City public school and City University of New York retirees were added today to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website.
The data from the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System (NYCTRS) show that the 795 teachers and school professionals who retired during 2016 with at least 30 years of service credit collected pensions that averaged $66,158 during 2017. Over 3,000 retirees collected $100,000 or more during the same period—an increase of nearly 23 percent since 2016.
These data are made public thanks to the Empire Center’s successful court challenges against efforts by public agencies to conceal information from taxpayers. The Center remains involved in litigation to protect and expand the public’s ability to examine public pensions and spending.
The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.
, NY POST
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| Bill De Blasio |
March 7, 2017
Two key elements of Hizzoner’s costly improvement initiative — which critics have called a failure — are the hiring of “leadership coaches” to boost principals’ performance and the contracting of nonprofits to supply students with social services and after-school programs.A retired principal who lied to corruption investigators, the co-author of a book written by Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and a nonprofit headed by an insurance fraudster are among those riding Mayor Bill de Blasio’s School Renewal Program gravy train, The Post has learned.
Individual pay rates for these consultants reach a staggering $1,400 a day, and the overall spending on those contracts totals around $40 million a year.
That comes on top of an $8.5 million payroll for 72 Department of Education bureaucrats dedicated to the Renewal push, as revealed by The Post in October.
Records recently obtained by The Post through the Freedom of Information Law show taxpayers shelled out nearly $2.1 million for 42 outside leadership coaches in the 2015-16 school year, while 35 have been paid more than $1.6 million this school year as of Feb. 3.
In 2007, schools Special Commissioner for Investigation Richard Condon blasted Hodge over a probe into nearly $25,000 worth of payments to the mother-in-law of Douglass Academy Assistant Principal Thomas Ajibola.
“Throughout the various interviews, Hodge was evasive when questioned by SCI investigators . . . and lied,” Condon reported.
Hodge was fined as a result of that report, the DOE said.
Hodge, who pocketed $100,404 in pension benefits during the past fiscal year, has been making $660 a day as a coach to the principals of two Renewal schools — the Leaders of Tomorrow School and the Young Scholars Academy.
But Hodge’s advice failed to keep Young Scholars from the chopping block. It’s now one of three Renewal schools that the DOE plans to merge into other schools in September for failing to “show meaningful progress” toward “sustainable improvements.”
“He should have been dismissed — and not hired after retirement to coach principals. He’s not the right person to be leading others,” said former DOE Deputy Chancellor Eric Nadelstern. “We don’t encourage principals to lie to SCI.”
In 2007, schools Special Commissioner for Investigation Richard Condon blasted Hodge over a probe into nearly $25,000 worth of payments to the mother-in-law of Douglass Academy Assistant Principal Thomas Ajibola.
“Throughout the various interviews, Hodge was evasive when questioned by SCI investigators . . . and lied,” Condon reported.
Hodge was fined as a result of that report, the DOE said.
Hodge, who pocketed $100,404 in pension benefits during the past fiscal year, has been making $660 a day as a coach to the principals of two Renewal schools — the Leaders of Tomorrow School and the Young Scholars Academy.
But Hodge’s advice failed to keep Young Scholars from the chopping block. It’s now one of three Renewal schools that the DOE plans to merge into other schools in September for failing to “show meaningful progress” toward “sustainable improvements.”
“He should have been dismissed — and not hired after retirement to coach principals. He’s not the right person to be leading others,” said former DOE Deputy Chancellor Eric Nadelstern. “We don’t encourage principals to lie to SCI.”
Hodge is among a cadre of coaches supplied by the Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit arm of the principals union. Records show the ELI was paid nearly $2.1 million during the 2015-16 school year and has received $1.5 million so far this year.
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| Ernest Logan |
In January 2016, union president Ernest Logan blasted the Renewal program as a “recipe for disaster,” but a spokesman recently said Logan’s opinions had since “evolved.” Logan declined to comment for this article.
Another $660-a-day ELI coach with questionable qualifications is David Morris, the former principal of Beach Channel High School, which the DOE closed in 2014 due to a dismal graduation rate of 46 percent and “widespread dissatisfaction” among parents, students and teachers.
Morris, who retired in 2015 and collected $98,449 in pension money last fiscal year, is advising the principals at Flushing High School and the tiny Leadership Institute, which has just 180 students, records show.
A former Beach Channel teacher called Morris’ consulting gig “a reward for failure and a waste of my taxpayer money.”
“You need a principal to walk the halls and be on top of things,” the source said.
“The kids thought he was a joke.”
One of the highest-earning leadership coaches is Laura Kotch, who was the top aide to Fariña as deputy schools chancellor. In 2008, Fariña and Kotch co-wrote “A School Leader’s Guide to Excellence,” an instructional manual reissued in 2014.
Records show Kotch is paid $1,200 a day as a leadership coach and pulled in $142,800 in 2015-16.
That’s eclipsed by Sandra Kase, an ex-DOE superintendent who commands $1,400 a day, pulling down $167,994 last year.
Kotch and Kase also have annual pensions of more than $137,000 and $184,000, respectively.
Nadelstern blasted the deals scored by the two, whom he described as “Carmen’s old friends.”
“Hiring cronies is hardly a reform strategy,” he said.
Meanwhile, the DOE last year awarded a series of two-year contracts worth a combined $77.2 million to 35 community-based nonprofits for after-school programs that include counseling, mentoring and parent workshops.
Options to extend the contracts by three years could add $115.8 million to the tab, according to a request approved by the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy.
A DOE report raised red flags on nearly two-thirds of the nonprofits — with only 12 of them avoiding black marks for “significant adverse information.”
Findings included the fraud conviction of Joseph Robles Jr., who chairs the board of St. Nicks Alliance of Brooklyn and was hit with five years’ probation and a $10,000 fine for a 1991 insurance scam tied to his family-owned business, Knights Collision Expert Repairs.
Robles “was arrested again in 2000 and 2006 on similar charges” that were later dismissed, the DOE report says.
Fraud and tax problems have also dogged the Community Association of Progressive Dominicans, where an aide to crooked ex-lawmaker Efrain Gonzalez stole nearly $35,000 through a “no-show” job from 2004 to 2006.
Miguel Castanos served 10 months in federal prison for the scheme. In 2013, the group also agreed to cough up more than $1.1 million to the IRS for failing to file returns or pay nearly $1.5 million in payroll taxes for 2010 to 2012, the DOE report said.
Staffers at other Renewal consultants also have run afoul of the law, including Steven Walters, who is serving four years for molesting three girls while working for Good Shepherd Services at PS 300 in the Bronx. And Colette Robertson, a home health aide for the Children’s Aid Society, is serving a 25-year federal sentence for taking sexually explicit photos of four prepubescent girls.
Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, likened the Renewal payouts to a “money pit.”
“They’re spending exorbitant amounts on consultants and contractors, instead of the classroom,” Davids said.
DOE spokeswoman Toya Holness defended the hiring of the nonprofits, saying: “These contracts include established organization that have other contracts with the DOE and other city agencies. There is a thorough background-check process to ensure vendor responsibility.”
She also denied any cronyism, noting, “These are lifelong educators with decades of proven experience turning schools around.”
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