After all the public hearings and a 300-page report from the state education department on the pros and cons of the system, mayoral control of city schools is sticking around, mostly as-is, for another two years.

“There doesn’t seem to be much movement toward reform, even though there is always noise about reform, and the legislature did what it’s been doing — which is to extend mayoral control, sunsetting in two years. So we’re going to be going over all this again in two years,” David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, said.

What You Need To Know

  • A two-year extension of mayoral control over city schools was included in the state budget deal

  • It comes after the state education department held public hearings and issued a lengthy report outlining pros and cons

  • Some lawmakers say they're not done considering whether other forms of governance might be a better fit in the future

The extension is part of the state’s massive budget agreement, to the chagrin of some lawmakers, like State Sen. John Liu.

“I would’ve preferred to deal with the important issue of mayoral [control] outside of the budget, just because there’s so many different issues and so many different stakeholders to include as part of the process, but the governor was very insistent upon getting mayoral [control] as part of the ginormous budget legislation,’ Liu, who chairs a state senate committee on New York City education, said.

Lawmakers agreed to a two-year extension, rather than the four-year deal Gov. Kathy Hochul had asked for. The extension comes with some fiddling around the edges.

The Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), which approves contracts and some policy decisions, will continue to have most of its members appointed by the mayor. But the mayor will have to choose the chair of the board from a list of three candidates, one each nominated by the State Senate, State Assembly and the Board of Regents.

“This injects somewhat of an element of independence in the Panel for Educational Policy, away from strictly under the mayor’s thumb all the time," Liu said.

Education professor David Bloomfield — who has proposed a “city control” system that would give more power to the City Council — said the new PEP chair could make for some interesting headlines, but most people won’t notice the change.

“Parents, teachers, students are likely not to see very much difference at all,” Bloomfield said.

Parents are more likely to see the impact of one other concession — lawmakers got the city to agree to spend an additional $2 billion to build more schools and classrooms, to meet the mandates of a 2022 state law requiring smaller class sizes. 

Liu said lawmakers will continue considering the future of the city’s public schools, with the help of the hefty tome published by the state education department, to determine if there’s a better way to move forward.

"I don’t know what that solution is, whether it’s a continuation of mayoral control, whether it’s going to an entirely new system,” he said.