Ride Is Over for Ed Board Chauffeurs
From The New York Daily News
By Joe Williams
July 16, 2002

The seven chauffeurs who drove Board of Education members around the city in luxury sedans are off the school payroll, eliminating a perk that cost about $327,000 a year.

With new legislation eliminating the seven-member Board of Ed and shifting control of the city's 1,100 schools to Mayor Bloomberg, the drivers have been transferred to the Police Department.

"The passing of the governance legislation requires the restructuring of the Board of Education," Schools Chancellor Harold Levy wrote in a memo to administrators last week outlining some changes.

The drivers, who also doubled as bodyguards, will now report to the NYPD's School Safety Division along with some other security officers working at the board's Brooklyn headquarters.

Also booted from the board's now-empty offices on the 11th floor of 110 Livingston St. in Brooklyn are the former board members' $106,000-per-year personal assistants and their secretaries. The fate of the assistants was unclear yesterday, but the secretaries, who are Civil Service employees, were moved to jobs elsewhere in the school or city bureaucracies.

Response from Glenn Pfeifer
July 2002

When, exactly, did the term "Civil Servant" get redefined as "jet-setting royalty?"

I am not an astute political historian, but I would guess that it happened somewhere between Dwight Eisenhower turning his Town & Country wagon out onto Pennsylvania Avenue when his presidential term expired, and John F. Kennedy pulling up the driveway in his chauffeured luxury sedan.

Don't quote me on this, but I read somewhere in a "pork-barrel" political paperback that among the earliest changes JFK made in his administration was to grow the white house staff exponentially.

I realize the NYC Bd. Of Ed is a quiet, little local example, but it speak volumes to the self-serving gluttony of our "public service" officials. Do you realize these are the same Board of Ed members who, over the years, have complained that the City and the state has not answered the "needs of the children?" We were told that text books were inferior, schools were not safe, physical structures were crumbling….and, by the way, we need XXX Million added to the budget.

I wonder if there was a line item for the "extra" personal assistant it would require to be fully prepared for the above referenced news conference. -gp

(Glenn Pfeifer is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine)