{"id":351613,"date":"2025-11-03T02:13:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T02:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/351613\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T02:13:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T02:13:45","slug":"mayoral-control-of-schools-emerges-as-flashpoint-in-nyc-mayoral-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/351613\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayoral control of schools emerges as flashpoint in NYC mayoral election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should the next mayor cede control of New York City\u2019s public schools<\/a>? It\u2019s a contentious idea that front-runner Zohran Mamdani supports \u2014 and his opponents have seized on in the final stretch of the race<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that I remain opposed to mayoral control is because of a critique of how it keeps many parents, students and teachers out of \u2026 decision-making about their lives,\u201d Mamdani told PIX11 ahead of early voting<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019ll come to forums, they\u2019ll testify for hours on end, and the decision was actually made weeks, if not months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and independent candidate, and Curtis Sliwa, the GOP nominee, back a renewal of mayoral control.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s seemingly contradictory position \u2014 an interest in giving up power over the largest agency by budget in the city he hopes to lead \u2014 isn\u2019t just theoretical. Regardless of who\u2019s elected, the next mayor is due in Albany next year<\/a> to make his case for or against mayoral control, with profound implications for over 900,000 schoolchildren.<\/p>\n

Mayoral control, promise and peril<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s educational system, the largest in the nation, is an outlier in terms of school governance.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of school districts across the country are governed by elected school boards, who hire and evaluate the superintendent, adopt policy and oversee the budget.<\/p>\n

But in New York City, the mayor controls the schools, with the power to pick the chancellor and pack the Panel for Educational Policy or \u201cPEP\u201d \u2014 the city\u2019s version of a school board \u2014 with his appointees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a system where everybody\u2019s in control, then nobody\u2019s in control. Somebody has to be held accountable for the system, and that\u2019s the main reason why I believe very much in mayoral control,\u201d said David Banks, Mayor Adams\u2019 former schools chancellor and the most recent to\u00a0secure a renewal<\/a>, in 2024.<\/p>\n

The model was first implemented in 2002 under former Mayor Bloomberg and, in the more than two decades since, has been met with a mixed response.<\/p>\n

Proponents of mayoral control say it gives New Yorkers one individual to hold accountable for the quality of the public schools, who\u2019s able to cut through bureaucracy and implement citywide changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe argument for it is efficiency,\u201d said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University Teachers College. He pointed to recent curricular mandates<\/a> that, in just a couple of years, changed how all city students learn to read.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are an education reformer and you want to implement some really major seismic overhaul of the way some or multiple aspects of your school system operates, then mayoral control is the golden tool for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But critics of the model, including Mamdani, say it shuts students, parents and teachers out of educational decision-making and comes with accountability concerns of its own. They point to a number of difficult choices \u2014 such as school closures or mergers<\/a> and budget cuts<\/a> \u2014 where people turned out in droves to public hearings and protests, but felt their concerns weren\u2019t taken into account.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile you can push reforms through really big reforms very quickly, it\u2019s only at the next mayoral election where we get to hold that agenda accountable,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThe issue with relying on the mayor\u2019s election as the source of accountability or as the referendum on education (is) the mayor is responsible for a plethora of other issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The candidates weigh in<\/p>\n

While education issues were largely on the sideline for much of this mayoral race, the subject picked up steam ahead of Election Day on Tuesday around the future of Gifted and Talented programs<\/a> and more recently, mayoral control.<\/p>\n

The three leading candidates vehemently disagree on both topics, but they share one point in common: The old way of school governance \u2014 consisting of a citywide Board of Education and 32 local school boards often plagued by corruption and cronyism \u2014 wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve said time and time again is we cannot go back to what existed before mayoral control,\u201d Mamdani said during the PIX11 interview.<\/p>\n

\"Zohran<\/p>\n

Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Zohran Mamdani campaigns in Brooklyn on Thursday. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Long-time observers of the school system described a degree of patronage and nepotism that, while not everywhere, was pervasive in corners of the city. The allegations abound: some people who got principal positions by paying for them, others who were appointed superintendents by relatives who sat on the board.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would still look to be accountable,\u201d Mamdani said. \u201cNew Yorkers should know that whatever happens in this city, if it\u2019s city government that\u2019s involved, the mayor has to answer for it at some level. It\u2019s possible, however, to build a system that has more involvement of the people it\u2019s looking to serve as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would that system look like? That\u2019s not quite clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re in the process of building out past this election, before January,\u201d the front-runner said.<\/p>\n

That process appears to have begun.<\/p>\n

New York State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa said the Mamdani campaign requested a copy of a 2024 report on mayoral control<\/a>, which did not explicitly endorse or reject mayoral control, but presented a history of school governance in the city and other models across the country.<\/p>\n

The nearly 300-page document did, however, summarize recommendations from the public, including fewer mayoral appointees on the PEP and a commission to propose more comprehensive reforms. And in an analysis of the available research, it found no conclusive evidence as to whether mayoral control leads to better student performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hope is that we can take the document and make it actionable,\u201d Rosa said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be up to the mayor, but I would offer to be helpful in the redesign or however they want to partner and think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Mamdani\u2019s campaign convened dozens of education advocates<\/a> for a virtual meeting, which included a breakout session on school governance, according to sources in attendance. The discussion centered around ways to share power with parents, including those serving on councils like the Panel for Educational Policy.<\/p>\n

Among the ideas pushed by advocates are to change the composition of the panel so that the majority of members are not appointed by the mayor, while a commission considers more substantive changes over a multiyear period, sources said. One proposal is to make the chancellor search a collaborative process that involves families, teachers and city officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Andrew Cuomo campaigns in Brooklyn on Friday. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Cuomo\u2019s platform argues that mayoral control is an \u201cimperative\u201d to ensure accountability for students\u2019 academic performance. In the last debate, he called mayoral control the single most \u201cinstrumental reform\u201d in education in decades, attacking Mamdani for seeking to undo it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is wholly inconsistent to say, \u2018I think it\u2019s a top priority, but I want to give up mayoral control. But I want to be a mayor who runs grocery stores,’\u201d Cuomo said, contrasting the front-runner\u2019s stance on school governance with his campaign promise to open city-run supermarkets<\/a>. \u201cForget the grocery stores \u2014 run the Department of Education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sliwa on his campaign website says he would \u201ckeep mayoral control of NYC public schools, but overhaul how the system operates<\/a>.\u201d He called for the creation of a school governance model that is more \u201ctransparent,\u201d with \u201cclear goals and measurable outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with his full-throttle endorsement of the model, Banks, the former chancellor, said he\u2019d like to see some changes to mayoral control, such as representation for high schools on the Panel for Educational Policy and changes to the law that would allow parents to speak virtually.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not a perfect system, but there is no perfect system that exists,\u201d he said. \u201cBut on balance, this is much better than the system that we had before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should the next mayor cede control of New York City\u2019s public schools? It\u2019s a contentious idea that front-runner…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":351614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,407,1370,728,405,403,5294,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-351613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-county","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115483352023114469","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}