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The city Department of Education is adding a new position to its top-heavy bureaucracy despite Chancellor David Banks’ vow to cut the central budget to spare schools from the ax, The Post has learned.
Danika Rux, Banks’ deputy chancellor for leadership, named Danielle Giunta to a newly created post: “chief of school leadership development.”
Giunta, a former principal, served nearly 10 years as superintendent of the city’s highest achieving region, District 26, which includes schools in middle-income to affluent Northeast Queens.
“My heart feels heavy as I step into this new position, but I want to assure you that I carry with me every lesson this community has taught me. Lessons of joy, love, high expectations, and the relentless pursuit of excellence,” Giunta said in an email to District 26 families.
Shortly before Banks took office in 2022, he vowed to shake up and slash the bloated bureaucracy, asking “What is the value added for having thousands of people who work at Tweed [Department of Education headquarters] in these high-paid positions?”
Giunta made $205,000 as superintendent. DOE spokesman Nathanial Styer would not specify her new salary, but three “chiefs of school support” at the same level get $222,972.
Banks added the job despite First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg telling Carolyn Quintana, deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, he could not give her a pay raise equal to peers, said a DOE insider familiar with the personnel moves.
“They say they’re cutting back, but they found the money for a new and unclear position. It makes the department lose even more credibility,” the source said.
Styer called Giunta’s appointment “backfilling,” but she will be the first to hold the position.
Giunta and the three other chiefs “will provide support and coaching” to superintendents, he said.
The move comes as Mayor Adams has ordered citywide budget cuts to help pay the burgeoning cost of services for asylum seekers.
Schools face painful cuts in pre-K, summer programs, and support services under a $547 million slash in DOE funding this school year, and deeper cuts in the next two years.
In another controversial move, Banks in August promoted Rux to a $265,000-a-year deputy chancellor’s post in a behind-the-scenes deal that included the hiring of her husband, Shawn Rux, as executive director of the Office of School Design. In exchange, his private consulting company had to stop doing business with the city.
Giunta’s deputy, Anthony Inzerillo, will take over District 26 as acting superintendent.
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