Up in Albany, the knives are out for Gotham’s public-school kids, as lawmakers toy with ending mayoral control of the city’s system: Will Gov. Hochul have Mayor Adams’ back against the assassins?
This week, the Democratic majorities in the Assembly and state Senate left out of their budget bills the renewal of mayor control, signaling their intent to take up the question only after the budget is settled — when Hochul has less leverage.
The law granting the mayor control lapses in June, after the Legislature extended it by just two years in 2022, and then only at the price of the gov agreeing to 1) an NYC-only “class size” law that serves only the interests of the United Federation of Teachers, and 2) fine print that reduced the mayor’s control over the policy-making Panel for Educational Policy.
Oh, and to a State Education Department study of the “effectiveness” of mayoral control, due this spring — and all too likely to be junk, since SED (which is completely independent of the gov) is an utter farce.
After more than two decades, there’s zero reason not to make mayoral control permanent — same as the governance of every other school system in the state is a settled question — except that state lawmakers enjoy toying with the city’s children and pleasing the UFT.
In her budget proposal for the year, Hochul proposed a four-year extension (as she did in 2022); that would at least end the Albany political games for a good while.
But the Legislature’s Democratic majorities plainly want to meddle more.
John Liu (D-Queens), who runs the Senate committee charged with overseeeing NYC’s schools, spelled that out Monday, telling a crowd of UFT members gathered in Albany: “The teachers know best how to educate. It’s not one guy at City Hall who knows best, it’s the teachers!”
No mention there of what parents might want, you’ll note — when minority parents form the backbone of Adams’ political base.
Meanwhile, Liu and other pols are complaining about how Adams has implemented the class-size law, which aims to force the city to spend $2 billion more a year to hire 18,000 new UFT members, even as enrollment as been steadily falling citywide for years (though the migrant crisis has it rising slightly for now).
And never mind that many parents would rather have their kids in a 25- or 30-student class in a good school than forced to go to a smaller classroom at a worse school with a bad teacher.
The last thing UFT chief Michael Mulgrew and his allies (Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie only became speaker after bending the knee to the state’s teacher unions) want is a mayor with a free hand to let charter schools flourish and demand accountability from teachers, principals and the sclerotic education bureaucracy.
Adams finds himself between a rock and hard place, as Hochul has proved reluctant to spend her own political capital on his behalf (not to mention the city’s kids).
It’s obscene that the governance of New York City’s schools is at the mercy of politicians cutting deals hours away in Albany — and damning that Liu, Heastie and other pols who supposedly answer to city voters are so content to keep on playing intrinsically corrupt games with the futures of Gotham’s kids.