Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sudden embrace of mayoral control of schools represents a recognition that he’ll need the authority to execute his signature policy of free universal child care, observers say.
Mamdani’s announcement last week about governance of the nation’s largest school system highlighted how much of his education platform remains undefined. Some elected officials and insiders said the move was the idealistic democratic socialist mayor’s acknowledgement of political reality. But other Mamdani supporters said the announcement came as a disappointing surprise.
In an interview, former Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted that mayoral control — where the mayor and their schools chancellor set education policy for the five boroughs — is vital to achieving any significant changes to city schools, like the new administration’s goal of universal child care.
“For a mayor with a progressive vision, with an equity-focused vision, you have to have that power to get anything done,” de Blasio said.
The former mayor declined to elaborate on what he’d told Mamdani about mayoral control. But De Blasio said there was no way the city could have launched pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds in 2014 during his first year in office without mayoral control. He said it allowed him to marshal the Department of Education and with other city agencies to create an entirely new grade.
“ Given the size and complexity of New York City public schools, the only way to have accountability, the only way to make sure there’s any progress is if there’s one elected official who’s fully responsible and the public knows it,” de Blasio said.
The current school governance structure has been in place since 2002, when then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed state lawmakers to dissolve the city’s elected school boards, which he called dysfunctional and corrupt.
Advocates for mayoral control argue it increases accountability and efficiency. But critics say the top-down structure separates decision makers from the reality on the ground, and creates whiplash from shifting policies from new administrations.
Matt Gonzales, a member of New Yorkers for Racially Just Public Schools, called Mamdani’s language on mayoral control at last week’s press conference “unexpected.”
“I’d like to understand [what] the thinking is behind the most recent statements … how and why there was this shift,” said Gonzales, who served on a transition committee that debated mayoral control.
Gonzales said he’s enthusiastic about Mamdani’s selection of Kamar Samuels as schools chancellor, and doesn’t view extending mayoral control as precluding significant change. “I don’t see it as a binary,” he said. Gonzales was one of nearly 40 people on Mamdani’s transition committee dedicated to youth and education.
After winning the mayoral race, Mamdani responded to a question about mayoral control by saying “I’m still just as critical as I’ve been, and frankly, it’s a criticism that comes out of an exhaustion of having seen so many try to participate in a system of our public education only to see decisions being made without any of their input taken into account.”
But education advocates he tapped as advisers were split on mayoral control, and tensions over whether to end the policy came to a head during a meeting of the transition subcommittee focused on youth and education. Several subcommittee members who spoke with Gothamist said participants shared materials supporting and opposing the renewal of mayoral control.
Jason Cone of the antipoverty nonprofit Robin Hood shared an article supporting mayoral control.
The article was written by Robin Hood CEO Richard Buery, who previously helped de Blasio launch pre-K.
“It could never have happened if Mayor de Blasio had not directly managed the school system,” Buery wrote.
Susan Stammler, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses, which represent neighborhood settlement houses that provide local services including child care, was among those on the transition who have advocated for maintaining mayoral control. She drew a link between the model and realizing the ambition of free universal child care.
“A citywide, coordinated approach is needed to contracting and seat allocation, and mayoral control allows that to happen more smoothly,” she said.
Gonzales shared his group’s policy roadmap calling for more “democratic” governance, as well as a state report on mayoral control that highlighted parents’ criticism of the current governance model, and policy recommendations from a parent group called the Education Council Consortium.
Mayoral control “strip(s) decision-making power from students, parents and educators,” the roadmap reads.
Neither Cone nor Gonzales would comment on the details of the subcommittee meeting on Dec. 2.
The debate highlighted how fundamental aspects of Mamdani’s approach to the Department of Education’s $43 billion budget remained an open question as the transition began.
Mamdani revealed his position just a day before he was sworn in as mayor.
“I want to acknowledge I have been skeptical of mayoral control in the past, even at times going as far as wanting to end the system entirely,” Mamdani said on New Year’s Eve. “I will be asking the legislature for a continuation of mayoral control.”
Mamdani’s statements came as he announced Samuels’ appointment and promised they would “pursue an aggressive democratization agenda” that empowers parents, educators and students.
A spokesperson for the Mamdani administration referred to the mayor’s prior comments on mayoral control.
Parent leaders and progressive activists said they never anticipated an immediate end to mayoral control, but were disappointed by Mamdani’s decision.
“My first reaction was like I felt sucker punched,” said Kaliris Salas, a Community Education Council president and member of New Yorkers for Racially Just Public Schools. “What I wasn’t expecting was a definitive stance of I’m going to ask for mayoral control and that’s it.”
Some activists who have worked closely with Mamdani said they still expect the new mayor to implement significant changes to school governance, but that they were willing to give the administration time to find its footing. It’s unclear how long the honeymoon will last.
“One of the reasons why he’s been so critical of mayoral control is because it’s been completely top-down,” said former Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former teacher and principal, and the founder of a Bronx public middle school, Cornerstone Academy for Social Action.
He also supported changing the Panel for Educational Policy, where a majority of members are appointed by the mayor, saying it shouldn’t be a “rubber stamp [for] whatever the mayor wants to do versus being an actual body that includes community voices.”
On mayoral control, Bowman suggested Mamdani’s latest comments reflected input from others who suggested taking an incremental approach.
“ He’s a great listener. He is a great learner,” said Bowman, who still believes that Mamdani wants to change the current version of mayoral control. “I didn’t take it as any kind of departure, quite frankly,” Bowman said of Mamdani’s statements last week.
Others heard his comments differently.
“I think we could still live in a world where we want to move away from mayoral control, and at the same time, it is important to understand and give time to a new mayor who has a different vision for how the buck stops at him,” said Felicia Singh, a member of Mamdani’s youth and education transition subcommittee and director of policy and government relations at the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families. “The question is how much time will it take for us to really see the fruits of that labor?”
Singh said opponents of the policy were not willing to wait indefinitely for an overhaul. But they also acknowledge that more work needs to be done to come up with an alternative system.
“We know we’re not ready for the end of mayor control on day one,” said Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, co-executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, which worked with Mamdani in the Legislature and advised him during the campaign. Her group is part of the coalition calling for a commission to identify new governance models.
“We reserve the right as advocates to continue to advocate what we want,” she said. “I’m taking him at his word that it won’t be a City Hall of ‘no’ but a City Hall of ‘how.’”