Chair Lee on central headcount reductions in savings plan

Okay, perfect, especially with a lot of the Medicaid cuts coming down the line.

For the savings plan, how many of the 97 filled central pedagogical positions are affected and which divisions are impacted or excluded?

What initiative are you referencing?

Sorry.

Well, I mean, based on the savings plan.

Hold on.

Let me just bring up a more detailed question.

So,

There, hold on, let me just read this whole, oh.

Yeah.

The vacancy reductions.

Oh, vacancy reductions.

Okay.

Okay.

So actually, let me just go through this.

The executive plan includes $922.2 million, correct me if I'm wrong, savings plan in FY27, which grows in the out years.

And the majority of the savings plan relies on cost containments and class size due to and due process cases.

So the remainder of savings are focused on contract reform, OTPS spending reduction, and other spending efficiencies.

So out of this large savings plan, which items were identified by the chief savings officer, and were any of these savings identified by OMB?

How did DOE and OMB work together on the savings plan?

Right, so all savings proposals were submitted by New York City Public Schools in collaboration with City Hall and OMB.

Okay, and they were all accepted by OMB?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, the ones that obviously made it into the budget.

And there's a $2 million savings for a reduction in central headcount, which would move some pedagogical positions out of central administration positions into unfilled school-based positions.

So according to DOE data, there are currently, this is what I meant, sorry.

So according to DOE data, there are currently 97 filled pedagogical positions in central across multiple divisions.

So how many of these positions is DOE planning to move and eliminate?

Yes, thank you for the question.

You know, that's one of our values is to make sure that we're really supporting schools with our human resources.

And that's getting closer and ensuring that teachers and all of the pedagogues that we have are getting closer and closer to schools.

And so I think, Michael, you might need to be sworn in.

But I'm going to turn it over to Michael Cheatham to talk about this some more.

Good morning, my name is Jidam.

It's where the truth.

Thank you.

But yes, on the reduction, you're talking about the reduction of central staff or are you talking about the access?

Just want to clarify because there's multiple.

Yeah, so according to the DOE data, there's currently 97 filled pedagogical positions in central across multiple divisions.

So how many of these positions is DOE planning to move and eliminate?

Well, there's various titles, so we're going to just work with our program offices to achieve the savings, the target.

So you're saying 97 pedagogical positions?

Yeah, currently 97 filled pedagogical positions in central across multiple divisions.

I'm not, that's data that I'm not familiar with on that part.

Okay, so which divisions potentially could see a reduction in pedagogical headcount?

Well, this is going to be, we're going to work with the divisions across all teams to make sure that they identify, it's going to cross various titles, vacancies that haven't been filled for some time are going to be the first ones that we prioritize.

Okay, so that hasn't been finalized yet.

The central budgets were working when on teams to when we roll it out for next fiscal year.

Okay.

And I know that it is often helpful to have the pedagogical staff in DOE Central, which is something you guys were talking about, I think, at the CEC meeting last time in our district, when crafting the programming for specific student populations.

So how will DOE ensure that the savings plan will not negatively impact that work?

So throughout our process of looking through savings, even proposing and submitting them, we wanted to make sure, one of the key things that the chancellor wanted to make sure was that there was no disruption to the schools whatsoever.

Okay, so no disruption to the programming services, great.

Okay, which is what we wanted to make sure as well.

Okay.