When Bill de Blasio became Mayor of New York City, many hoped that the Bloomberg era policymakers at Tweed would have been forced to resign as he would "clean house". Unfortunately. the Mayor appointed Carmen Farina as Chancellor and she retained 80% of the Bloomberg policymakers. The result was the conflict between the DOE and teachers continued as teachers looked at the DOE as the enemy.
DOE policies like school-based"Fair Student Funding" which incentivizes principals to hire"the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school. Tight school budgets that was only funded at 90% of their appropriate funding. The 1,000+ ATR pool that wastes $150 million dollars a year. Finally, the continued hiring of incompetent and vindictive "Leadership Academy Principals"that , rather than collaborate with staff did the opposite and dictated to their staff.
However, the worst offense by the Bloomberg policymakers at the DOE was violating student privacy laws by giving student names and addresses to charter schools in violation of State and Federal privacy laws. By giving the charter schools public school student names and addresses, the charter schools, armed with this knowledge they were able to pick off students that were not English Language Learners and did not need Special Education services, by sending them glossy flyers about their charter school.
Susan Edelman of the New York Post published an article that shows why the DOE may have violated student privacy rights and both the State and Federal government have initiated an investigation. On the nyc public school parent blog more information is also available.
The DOE's apparent violation of student privacy rights should result in many resignations at Tweed if the Mayor and Chancellor do their "due diligence".