Building on a Post storythat ran on Monday, GothamSchoolsyesterday spelled out real concerns with the DOE's high-price-tag contract with the Accenture consulting firm for efforts ostensibly aimed at savings. Back in November, City Limits profiled small book packagers-- folks who develop and distribute materials critical to instructing New York City's English language learners -- whose businesses will close if the DOE's plans to consolidate suppliers (in the name of savings) are carried out. It's no stretch to understand the real need to trim expenses, but how are the myriad, polyglot students of New York served by shuttering the very minority- and women-owned businesses that exist to educate them?

The City Council was expected to take up the contracts issue in a hearing slated for Monday, March 2nd, which was canceled late last week (days before the snowstorm that shut the city's schools). According to Council PR representatives, the contracts hearing will be rescheduled for April, although no new date has been set.

It's terrific that more journalists are attending to the crushing effects of the DOE steamroller -- consolidating resources to create savings, with 'collateral damage' that ends up putting New Yorkers out of work. But the issue that's not getting enough play (yet), and the issue that floored me when I reported the City Limits piece, is the DOE's deliberate exemption from Local Law 120-- which it claims as an entity under mayoral control and not under the city's direct supervision. That exemption means DOE can essentially ignore legal directives enacted by Mayor Bloomberg to protect small and minority-owned businesses, in the name of savings.

What's saved, here? What's lost? How does this strategy serve the city's students? All of these questions deserve answers, and careful, deliberate scrutiny by city leadership.