The de Blasio administration’s warmer, fuzzier approach toward teachers apparently hasn’t reached senior staffers at the Department of Education — they’re quitting in droves, sources told The Post.
As many as 100 top-level administrators have left the DOE since January amid low morale, the sources said.
While turnover with a new administration is common, the rush to the door is said to be over mismanagement rather than ideology.
“They’re leaving because they see the place is being poorly run,” said one source. “In the last administration, there was organizational discipline and systems for getting things done — those no longer exist.”
The brain drain has gotten so bad that Chancellor Carmen Fariña has taken to giving pep talks at DOE headquarters.
The goal is to better explain her vision beyond just pinning all hopes on expanding pre-kindergarten and after-school programs, multiple sources said.
But one sign of the DOE’s slow going is an internal e-mail obtained by The Post that says that educrats are still conducting fact-finding to figure out what works.
“We are approaching this work without any preconceived notion of ‘the answer,’ ” chief strategy officer Josh Wallack wrote.
DOE officials said Fariña’s talks with staffers were just regular meetings, and attributed the loss in personnel entirely to the transition.
They would not say how many high-level staffers have left.