Thursday, September 9, 2021

DESE organizational update

 If, like me, you were so irritated that DESE was posting chirpy "ready for school" videos on September 7, you may have missed that Commissioner Riley has reorganized his senior officials. To quote from the announcement (item 4): 

...the Commissioner is bringing back the two deputy commissioner positions and creating a leadership cabinet of seven members, six of whom are existing DESE employees. The seven are:

  • Chief Financial Officer Bill Bell
  • Chief School Officer Komal Bhasin (Kaleidoscope Collective for Learning, Statewide System of Support, Office of Language Acquisition, Office of Educational Technology)
  • Chief of Staff Leldamy Correa
  • Chief Officer for Data, Assessment, and Accountability Rob Curtin
  • Deputy Commissioner Russell Johnston (Special Services, Strategic Transformation, Problem Resolution, Curriculum and Instruction, Educator Effectiveness)
  • Deputy Commissioner Regina Robinson (who is new to DESE) (Strategic Initiatives, Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems and Innovative Assessments, Research and Planning, Educational Options)
  • General Counsel Rhoda Schneider.

The changes take effect Tuesday, September 7.

Aside from those of us who need to know people's titles in order to write about them, why should we care? Well, to me a lot of this seems to focus pretty heavily on the ethereal rather than the concrete. 

It's also never been clear to me if the DESE finance folks actually work for Bill Bell, so I'm not sure this helps with the funding piece. 

In fact, I think I now need to know who answers to who in this line-up, overall. 

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