On December 17, the New York State Assembly will hold hearings on the future of the “mayoral control” system of New York City public school governance.  The hearing will begin at 10:00 a.m. and can be viewed online here.  Parents, students, and concerned members of the community should pay close attention.

The stated purpose of the hearing is "to examine best practices utilized by other school districts which may be implemented in the New York City School District."  The hearing will be chaired by Michael Benedetto, the Bronx Coop City based Democrat, who leads the Assembly's standing committee on education.

The legislative hearings will help decide whether the governance system should be eliminated, extended for a number of years, or made permanent.  In spring 2019, as part of the state budget process, the system was extended for three years.  Absent a new agreement, it will end on June 30, 2022.

The Assembly committee hearing is not exactly a "public hearing" since interested members of the public will not be allowed to testify.  There will be so-called "expert" testimony where only invited activists, bureaucrats, and interest groups will be heard.  

It's unclear whether this arrangement will elevate discussion of the issue - or just prevent any broader airing of public dissatisfaction with the state of the schools.  Given the poor performance of the system, as guided by the experts and politicians, maybe it's time for the irregular, non-expert voices to be heard.

If the public schools were performing excellently, if the wide racial achievement gap was narrowing, if all children were being prepared for a prosperous future, the extension of the current system would be a no brainer.

But more than 15 years of mayoral control, under Mayors Bloomberg and De Blasio, have failed to deliver substantial improvements in student performance.  According to 2019 State Education Department statistics, barely 1 in 3 Brown or Black students are proficient in either math or English.  Civics, art, athletics, science have been reduced or removed.

Governor Cuomo has floated the idea of a three year extension.  This will probably be the point of agreement between the Governor, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.  Lame duck Mayor De Blasio has supported the three-year timeframe.

Interested “bystanders” include students, parents, the public at large, unions representing teachers and school administrators.  They will all try to influence the outcome of this process.  

The system of mayoral control began under the Bloomberg administration. He pushed an agenda that included high stakes testing, union busting, charter school proliferation, and an unwillingness to appoint professional educators to run the system.  The worst of his many bad decisions was the hiring of Cathleen “Cathie” Black, the clueless media executive with no experience, certainly no expertise, in education.  She was unqualified to be a teacher, much less a Chancellor.

She lasted only three months before repeated off the cuff, off color comments exposed her contempt for the parents and students she was supposed to serve.

Most public school systems, including all of the more effective ones, have checks and balances that would have prevented serious consideration of such a candidate for Chancellor.  An elected, or even an appointed School Board would have had enough independence to block such a hire.

But under mayoral control, there are no structures to prevent the politically-inspired missteps of a politician who dreams of being President (both Bloomberg and De Blasio shared this overestimation of their abilities.).  New York's old Board of Education was highly flawed, but it would clearly have prevented the Cathie Black fiasco. 

DeBlasio has been less successful in Albany, getting only short term extensions of the control system.   He has been more supportive of the UFT, less supportive of standardized testing and non-educator business persons as chancellors.  Like Bloomberg, he ignored what was effectively a “push out” policy for staff persons of color. Parent and student involvement was minimal.

Apathy is the key to the renewal of mayoral control.  New York state has more than 600 local school districts.  None of the others - including all the higher performing districts - have unrestrained mayoral control as in New York City. If the structure delivered better results, it could be justified.  But clearly it does not.  What rational community would leave educational decision making exclusively in the hands of a single politician?

If mayoral control is a success, why not extend it statewide?  If it's not working, why extend this obstacle to achievement and equity?