A) 3,894,812 subway rides
B) 15,579 pairs of Prada heels
C) 1812 hours with the Emperors VIP Club
D) 315 years of education at the Brearley School
E) 18 staff for the New York City Department of Education’s Division of Assessment and Accountability
On page 446 of New York City’s FY09 budget, we learn that the Division of Assessment and Accountability is budgeted at $8,287,282. $7,789,623 will buy you 18 staff - that’s $432,757 per person!
The irony of NYC’s selective attention to budgeting issues? Priceless.
Update: NYC Parents dishes the goods on Bloomberg’s $4.5 million dollar slush fund, which he used to reward city council members.
Update II: NYC DOE’s Press Secretary David Cantor posted the following correction to the NYC education news listserve:
The actual headcount in the DOE’s Office of Accountability is 79, not 18. The actual budget for salaries is $6.7 million, not $8.3 million. The correct headcount figure is reflected in the most recent DOE Financial Status Report, located online here on page 13. The correct budget figure will appear in the next iteration of the City budget. Sorry for the confusion.
As skoolboy said, “The fact that the people responsible for assessment can’t put together an intelligible budget should give us great confidence about the assessment data they report.”