A pledge to slash the central Department of Education bureaucracy in Tweed Courthouse and redirect those salaries to frontline educators.
Mamdanis Plan to Fire the DOE Bureaucrats and Hire More Teachers
A common complaint from parents and teachers is that the Department of Education is a bloated, unresponsive bureaucracy that consumes resources that should go directly to schools. Zhoran Mamdani pledges a top-to-bottom audit of the central DOE administration with the goal of cutting its budget and headcount by at least 30% within his first term. The savingshundreds of millions of dollars annuallywould be converted into direct funding for schools to hire more teachers, counselors, social workers, and arts specialists, reducing class sizes and increasing support services.
Positions deemed non-essential to supporting classroom instruction would be eliminated or decentralized to the borough or community district level. The remaining central office would be refocused on equity oversight, data transparency, and providing schools with optional support services, not mandates. We have too many people pushing paper in Manhattan and not enough people teaching children in the classrooms, Mamdani states bluntly. My plan puts money and power where it belongs: in the schools themselves. Its about prioritizing the educational frontline over the bureaucratic rear echelon.
