Schools Chancellor David Banks was in budget-less Albany yesterday to convince the Legislature (which has failed in its primary obligation to adopt a spending plan for the new fiscal year) to not let mayoral control of schools expire on June 30, when the current temporary law sunsets and the old awful Board of Education returns from the grave where it’s been buried since 2002.
Back then the chancellor used to work, not for the elected leader of New York, the mayor, but for the hydra-headed BOE with six different politicians appointing members who were locked into place for four years and couldn’t be removed.
We remember when Bronx Borough President Freddy Ferrer appointed Ninfa Segarra to the panel in 1990, but then she went rogue against his wishes and teamed up with the conservative members from Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens against the chancellor and Mayor David Dinkins.
Ferrer demanded Segarra’s resignation. She said “get lost” and remained and the Gang of Four took control and drove out the chancellor in 1993 over the objections of Dinkins. Segarra then sided with Rudy Giuliani in that year’s election and he rewarded her when he won by appointing her a deputy mayor.
That horror show is coming back without mayoral control.
In the 22 years of mayoral control, under three very different mayors — Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams — and their selected chancellors, there has been bureaucratic stability, political accountability and, most importantly, educational progress. Most everyone, including us, thinks that Banks is doing a good job, but it is Adams who is ultimately responsible.
But the teachers union disagrees because they want to run the schools, not the mayor. As we heard long ago, everyone in the school system has a union except the pupils.
Gov. Hochul sought a four-year extension of mayoral control in the budget, which was due on Monday. That would have been twice as long as the Legislature granted Adams in 2022. But it’s unlikely to happen in the budget, whenever it’s done, because Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie says that lawmakers don’t do policy in the budget (except when they do do policy in the budget).
When they passed the measly 24-month extension two years ago, they also required that the state commissioner of education study mayoral control and “best practices utilized by other school districts” and “contract with an institute of higher education to assist in conducting such review and assessment.” And so a quarter-million dollar contract was signed with a nonprofit called WestEd.
There was a further mandate to hold a public hearing in each borough to “engage and solicit input from a broad and diverse range of stakeholders and other interested parties, including but not limited to students, parents, teachers, administrators, staff and individuals with experience and expertise in education policy and school governance.” What we got were five circus-like hearings where every crank came out to decry whatever they didn’t like, all sweet music to the teachers union.
Under the law, that report was due by Dec. 1, 2023, but the contract didn’t start until Dec. 15, so the new target date was set as March 31. But that was missed, along with the budget. Look for the report next week. We wonder if there will be a chapter on Ninfa Segarra.
