#Shameless profiteering by the NYC Department of Education

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza needs to tell his minions to stop trying to cash in on the pandemic: NY1 reports that the Department of Education is even trying to milk its nonprofit community partners.

The DOE claims that it’s just sharing its increased costs for COVID-related cleaning and maintenance, which requires custodians to put in overtime. Yet one nonprofit, which runs a homework camp, says fees have tripled.

That’s outrageous, especially for groups that are trying to help less-privileged kids succeed — and are already pinched since they must run smaller programs thanks to social-distancing rules.

The mess also reflects the city’s decades-long failure to rationalize school cleaning, as many custodians make out like bandits even as schools remain not-so-clean.

This outrage follows on the DOE’s attempt to charge Success Academy new fees for its public-schoolchildren to use seven athletic facilities they’ve used cost-free for years (one of which Success paid to renovate).

No doubt the DOE is feeling big budget pains, but it should look for savings elsewhere. Start by eliminating the new layers of bureaucracy that Carranza has created.