Mayor Adrian Fenty plans to increase the size of the state superintendent’s office by more than 150 percent, despite concerns from elected officials that the bureaucracy there is already bloated.
Fenty’s fiscal 2009 budget, released publicly Thursday, gives Deborah Gist a staff of more than 400 full-time employees, nearly 250 more from fiscal 2008 and more than five times the staff in fiscal 2007. Gist’s office must enforce federal regulations and supervise numerous troubled departments, including federal education grants and special education.
Last month, D.C. Council members asked pointed questions of Gist and the growth of her office. Some council members said they were worried that Gist, who had not managed a large agency before Fenty’s takeover of the schools, was building a staff too large to control.
If Fenty’s budget is approved, Gist will have nearly $400 million at her disposal. That amount is a more than fourfold increase over fiscal 2007.
Gist’s spokesman, John Stokes, declined to comment for this story.
She still has some supporters on the council, however.
“I have a high regard for Deborah Gist. I’ve found her to be a very capable manager,” said Phil Mendelson, D-at large, one of the leading critics of the Fenty administration.
Nevertheless, Mendelson said he was worried that Fenty was increasing the education bureaucracy’s budget more than a year after promising to cut expenditures there.
“When the takeover was proposed, it was promised that we would see significant improvement without more money,” Mendelson said. “Schools need resources. But we agreed last summer that the schools need a lot more than just money.”
Mendelson was one of two council members to vote against Fenty’s school takeover. Asked how he rated the mayor’s progress at fixing the schools, Mendelson said: “The jury’s still out.”
