Sanitation Expert And A Maintenance Engineer; Garbage Man, A Janitor And You My Dear . . .
Every executive knows that the cheapest way to keep employees happy is to give them exciting new job titles:
Posted: December 26th, 2007 | Filed under: Please, Make It StopFive years into the tenure of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, a major administrative restructuring of the city schools has brought the wacky culture of corporate job titles to the Tweed Courthouse.
There, among the ranks of top school officials working for Klein is a chief accountability officer making $196,000, a chief knowledge officer making $177,000, a chief talent officer making $172,000 and a chief portfolio officer making $162,000.
There’s also a chief equality officer, but he’s working for free this year.
Then there are all the corporate titles, in spades. Several divisions each have a chief executive officer, there’s a product manager for knowledge management, a demand research manager, a director of virtual enterprise and dozens of senior achievement facilitators.
There was someone called the director of restructuring and human capital, but he’s now the senior director of sustainability, at $123,000.
Parents say it’s enough to make them dizzy.
“It’s a whole mess,” said Anastatia Davis-John, the parent association president at Brooklyn’s Public School 135.
“It’s totally confusing. They switched from districts to regions and now they’ve switched back, and half the titles you don’t know what they mean. . . . It’s especially difficult for parents who can’t speak English. They don’t know who is representing what and who is doing what.”
Teachers are still called teachers, of course. And principals are still principals — though under a new system that gives principals more autonomy and Klein often calls them “school CEOs.”