Posted on: Thursday, July 1, 2004
Switch means stronger role for DOE
| • | DOE 500 teachers short |
Advertiser Staff
In a quiet but potentially significant step, the state Department of Accounting and General Services today will begin to move money and power over school repair and maintenance to the state Department of Education.
The switch, part of an education-reform law approved by the Legislature this year, will eventually give the DOE more control over how to deal with a $600 million backlog of school projects.
Today's transfer involves $100 million in bond money and $6 million in cash for repair and maintenance. Although the DOE and DAGS have agreed that DAGS would manage certain school projects this fiscal year, the DOE will have greater say over the projects.
"We will be looking at trying to do more of the projects ourselves," Rae Loui, an assistant superintendent at the DOE's Office of Business Services, told members of the state Board of Education at a committee meeting on the new law yesterday.
The law gives the DOE more autonomy over school policy and finance.
An interagency group is studying how to transfer other school-related functions from DAGS and the state Department of Human Resources Development by July 2005, and from the state Department of Budget & Finance, the attorney general's office, the state Department of Health and the state Department of Human Services by July 2006.
