New York state Senate Republicans on Friday eviscerated the Board of Regents for its approval of a secret $155,000 pay increase for high colleges boss Betty Rosa, calling it yet one more instance of “out-of-control spending.”
The lawmakers, in a scathing letter, urged the 15-member panel to rethink the “unwarranted and offensive pay increase,” which introduced Rosa, the State Training Division commissioner and Board of Regents chair, to a whopping $489,000 annual wage.
Rosa, as The Publish revealed this week, can be cashing in on a virtually $120,000 pension from her time as a Bronx principal and superintendent, which the GOP pols identified means she’s pocketing over $600,000 whole in taxpayer money.
“New Yorkers are struggling to pay their bills,” the 16 lawmakers, led by state Senate Minority Chief Robert Ortt, wrote within the letter. “When the median household income in New York State is $81,000, it is incomprehensible that a raise twice that amount to a public official who was already making four times the median household income was approved by you as board members.”
The letter added that: “Reckless spending such as Commissioner Rosa’s raise is just another example of out-of-control spending we are seeing year-after-year in this State, culminating in this year’s state budget proposal of a whopping $252 billion.”
On high of that, the pols famous that New York schoolkids’ take a look at scores proceed to lag behind nationwide averages.
The “Nation’s Report Card” launched Wednesday confirmed that two-thirds of New York Metropolis fourth graders will not be proficient in math and even fewer proved proficient in studying – regardless of the Empire State funneling extra money into its colleges than every other within the nation.
“To add further insult to injury, Commissioner Rosa is leading a department where policies are
failing to improve test scores for New York’s children,” the letter mentioned.
“New York continues to lag the national average in math scores for fourth and eighth graders and is only average in reading scores despite spending more money per pupil than any other state in the country.”
The Board of Regents was contacted for remark.
