Going down the mayoral control study rabbit hole

The long-awaited state Department of Education report on mayoral control of New York City schools was released Tuesday afternoon, recommending that a commission be created to evaluate options around maintaining or adjusting the current system. It also noted public feelings toward the system.

“The majority of participating constituents want to see changes to the current policy of mayoral control of public schools,” according to the report.

The report additionally addressed concerns around the New York City Panel for Education Policy, which votes on major education policy and contracts. Many public comments called the panel ineffective and said that New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been given outsized influence over it, as he appoints 13 of its 23 members. Calls to revamp its structure, the report said, were supported by the public.

The report comes as Adams and New York City schools Chancellor David Banks have spent this year lobbying lawmakers in Albany to extend mayoral control, which is slated to expire on June 30. The system gives the mayor the final say on how schools are run rather than a locally elected school board. In place since 2002, calls have grown for change among parents, students, teachers and lawmakers.

In a statement, the city Department of Education suggested the report was political, stressing that mayoral control increases transparency, parental involvement, solutions and accountability while deriding the report’s quality.

“It is clear this report falls far short of the clear and decisive roadmap it was expected to be,” the department said. “Riddled with ambiguity and calling for yet another study to study school governance is not what New Yorkers need and deserve.”

The United Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union in New York City, did not take issue with the report and President Michael Mulgrew said he looked forward to evaluating the system after the budget was done.

“We look forward to an in-depth discussion about adding more checks and balances to New York City’s system of mayoral control," Mulgrew said.

In Albany, some lawmakers have been frustrated over questions about whether the New York City Department of Education was meeting new, lower class size requirements. The state Department of Education temporarily withheld money from the city over the issue.

State lawmakers have expressed little interest in continuing the mayoral control system. The state Senate and Assembly both excluded mayoral control from their one-house budgets, with state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins saying last week that the policy, which Gov. Kathy Hochul supports, wouldn’t make it into the budget.

State Senate New York City Education Committee Chair John Liu and state Senate Education Committee Chair Shelly Mayer said in a joint statement that the report was “an objective and authoritative review of school governance in New York City over the last 50 years and other models of school governance from around the country.” They added that they would rely on it during post-budget deliberations.

Liu later said of the department in an interview, “They were never tasked with recommending whether or not mayoral control was the best thing since sliced bread.” He said that task is up to the Legislature and Hochul.

“There are 213 legislators, and so there’s going to be differences of opinion no question, but in the end we all get together and figure out what the solution is and I have every confidence we will pass what is required well in advance of the current law expiring,” he told City & State.

Banks said he didn’t want to be chancellor of a department that didn’t answer to the mayor, telling reporters in Albany last month he “didn’t sign up for that.” But once the budget is finalized, many lawmakers hope that will happen before Passover, policy items such as mayoral control will be the Legislature’s main focus.

Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, said the report did a lot of things, like codify the desire for change and calls for accountability many feel about mayoral control in New York City.

“You look at the recommendations, it was a more deliberative decision-making body. It was the call for a commission to study what shared governance has the potential to look like it was rethinking representation structure. … Everything boils down to what the future of representation on the panel should look like,” Collins said.

However, he felt the report didn’t answer the most important question. 

“Is mayoral control in New York City working?” he said. “That question is not answered by this report.”