Will the state DOE end Adams’s mayoral control of public schools?
A new state law requires that the New York State Education Department (NYSDOE) review the effectiveness of Mayor Eric Adams’s mayoral control of New York City public schools through a series of public hearings that began this December.
The first hearing was held at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx on December 5; the second was in Queens at Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical High School on December 18. The consensus of many testimonies at the hearings protested against Adams’s “unnecessary” budget cuts to education resources and demanded more “checks and balances.” Others testified that the city’s mayors in general have been given too much power over schools, allowing politics and favoritism to affect policy and appointments depending on who’s in office.
“I would have taught in New York City for free. I love what I do,” said Celestine Clee-Harvin, an educator from School District 11, at the Bronx hearing. “[But] the scholars of New York City deserve much more than the mayoral control that we have right now.”
Many said that mayoral authority of schools should end.
“We cannot afford to continue to fight with the mayor or anyone else. Our children deserve better. We deserve better as educators,” continued Clee-Harvin. “I stand up before you flat-foot[ed], 10 toes down, to let you know that we need to educate our children.”
New York City’s public school system has been under mayoral control for more than the last two decades, beginning with Michael Bloomberg in 2002. It gave Bloomberg the power to appoint the city’s schools chancellor and members to the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), which runs the city Department of Education (DOE). Before the 1990s, the city’s schools were run by 32 community-elected school boards and the Board of Education. However, it was riddled with corruption, reported City & State.
In July 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill to extend Adams’s mayoral control for another two years instead of his requested four. Each of the city’s school districts still has its own Community Education Council (CEC) and there are four citywide councils.
“There is no perfect governance system. There are countless opinions about how the schools should be run,” said Schools Chancellor David Banks at the Bronx public hearing. He was appointed by Adams in January 2022. “Yet, I know from firsthand experience the flaws of the previous system and the ways that our students suffered as a result. Mayoral accountability, in contrast, is as close as we can get to a system that is the most manageable, least politicized, and most impactful.”
Ultimately, the state has to decide whether the city’s mayor can continue to have mayoral control under Chapter 364 of the Laws of 2022. The NYSDOE will hold five public hearings total, in which students, parents, teachers, school administrators and staff, and members of the public are encouraged to testify either in-person or by submitting written electronic testimony by January 31, 2024.
The remaining hearings will be in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island in January 2024:
Boys and Girls High School (1700 Fulton Street), Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Educational Complex (122 Amsterdam Avenue), Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
New Dorp High School (465 New Dorp Lane), Monday, Jan. 29, 2024, 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member who writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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