The city Education Department has no record of how it spent $347 million earmarked to upgrade internet service at middle schools, an audit showed Sunday.
The department began to update its broadband technology by installing fiber optic cables and other components in all of its 503 middle schools in 2007.
The project was completed last year, but there are no documents showing how much it actually cost, project plans or progress reports, according to city Controller Scott Stringer.
In addition, many educators are frustrated by the service, according to a user-satisfaction survey Stringer’s office conducted.
All told, 33% of the 440 middle school principals and staff who responded said they were not satisfied with the internet service, 45% said the speed did not meet their instructional needs, and 25% said the service was inadequate.
“If we’re going to be the greatest city in the world in this century and the next, we have to prepare our kids for the future,” Stringer said.
“It’s pretty hard to engage a child when the video takes five minutes to load,” he added. “It’s not easy to spread joy and promote the love of learning if a child is at a laptop watching the spinning wheel of death for an extended period.”
In response to the survey, department officials argued there was no need to improve the internet service.
They said “school-based respondents were confused by the phrasing of the auditors’ User Satisfaction Survey question about bandwidth upgrades.”
The controller’s office insisted the survey questions were clear and reviewed by the Education Department’s auditor general.
As for cost records, education officials said “there was no overarching ‘initiative for middle schools.’ “
Instead, they said, the funding was covered by different sources.
Stringer called that a poor explanation.
“Accountability of our tax dollars means that we want to see this money in our schools,” he said. “The DOE is one of the least transparent agencies in the government. They’d rather hide everything than open up their books.”
