The state’s high schooling honcho Betty Rosa on Wednesday defended scoring a hush-hush $155,000 increase — conveniently leaving out that she’s additionally double-dipping a plum pension, The Put up has realized.
Rosa argued the quiet increase — a bombshell first reported by the Albany Instances Union — places her now-$489,000 annual wage as State Schooling Division commissioner and chair of Board of Regents extra according to a couple of lavishly compensated native superintendents.
She went on about her want to make more cash to pay for her two residences, an Albany house and home in Rockland County.
“I maintain two titles, 2.7 million youngsters, and I’m going to make lower than when any person who has 3,600 youngsters?” she whined.
However Rosa didn’t point out that she can be gathering an almost $120,000 pension from her time as a Bronx principal and superintendent — a truth found by The Put up in state information.
Property information additionally point out Rosa has a 3rd dwelling in Texas.
An Schooling Division spokesperson defended Rosa’s pension.
“After a profitable profession in New York Metropolis faculties, Commissioner Rosa earned a pension, simply as she acquired a reliable pay improve when appointed (College of the State of New York) President, each of that are fully above board and legally licensed,” spokesperson JP O’Hare instructed The Put up.
When requested by The Put up how New York youngsters are higher served by the increase, Rosa as a substitute complained in regards to the different superintendents who made extra.
“This isn’t about being served, that is about… that is the wage,” she mentioned. “I can flip round and say why your youngsters being higher served in District X when the board negotiated – that’s their reply to who they need because the superintendent.”
Rosa, who’s now one among New York’s highest-paid public staff, spent a lot of Wednesday complaining up and down in entrance of state lawmakers about what she thought of an absence of funding from Albany.
Certainly, the listening to over Gov. Kathy Hochul’s funds plan largely became a gripe session about schooling funding — though they’d little to say about sagging-to-middling take a look at scores.
Hochul’s funds proposal estimated this 12 months’s faculty help prices to run round $37.5 billion. College help is the second-highest portion of state spending behind Medicaid.
The governor’s plan tweaks the advanced components that determines how a lot every faculty will get. These proposed changes would use up to date measures of poverty as a substitute of 25-year-old census information.
However New York Metropolis Colleges Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who herself is the highest-paid metropolis worker, grumbled that Massive Apple faculties may take what she estimates is a $350 million hit below the tweaks.
The grousing comes as New York schooling officers are below fireplace for lavish spending with solely mediocre statewide take a look at outcomes to point out for it.
“Based on SED information, 59% of New York’s youngsters flunked their math exams final 12 months — however I believe even they will calculate that this insane pay increase doesn’t add up,” one Albany insider opined.
“New York spends extra per pupil than every other state with mainly nothing to point out for it, and as a substitute of taking motion this Chancellor simply celebrates the established order. She’s fortunate there’s no accountability on the opposite aspect of Washington Avenue.”
State Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Suffolk) mentioned the state’s take a look at outcomes present Rosa’s increase is unwarranted.
“If New York State was primary within the nation and was main internationally, I couldn’t argue with paying Betty Rosa possibly slightly extra, however with the outcomes that they’re producing right here in New York state, it’s embarrassing,” he mentioned. “She ought to decline that, as a result of these superintendents she’s referring to, they’re all overpaid.”
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