Adams faces tough battle to maintain control of New York City school system

NEW YORK — Eric Adams is readying himself for one of the toughest fights of his mayoralty: A push for state lawmakers to grant him continued control of New York City’s public school system.

All signs point to a difficult negotiation for the mayor, who will confront state legislators upset about his budget cuts and his resistance to lowering class sizes and eager to embrace a new school governance structure.

“Many legislators are critical about the way the mayor has handled education and schools,” said state Sen. John Liu, who heads the Senate’s New York City Education Committee. “They’ve been concerned about ongoing budget cuts to schools even as we've continued to increase state funding for New York City public schools, and people are concerned about the city's reluctance to embrace class size reduction.”

Talks around mayoral control are beginning to take shape as the annual legislative session gets underway in Albany, and the issue is certain to be a focus of negotiations between the first-term mayor and lawmakers.

On Thursday more than 100 people poured into a state legislative hearing to weigh in on mayoral control — one of a series the state Education Department is holding to elicit feedback on the policy as it prepares a report on its effectiveness. While many called for ending mayoral control as they railed against Adams' recent budget cuts among other things, some signaled their support.

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa insisted the department’s charge is to deliver findings, not make recommendations.

“Different themes are going to pop up based on what we’re capturing and that’s what we’re gonna share, and then the governor and the legislature have to take a look at the report and say what’s the next step,” she told reporters during a gaggle.

Attention is turning to the state Education Department, which has to submit the report to Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature at the end of March. The deadline lands shortly before negotiations around the state budget typically wrap up, indicating the policy fight is likely to stretch into June, when lawmakers finalize their six-month session.

At issue is a 2002 law that shifted control over public education to mayors from local school boards. Known as mayoral control, the measure expires every few years and is up again on June 30. Like his predecessors, Adams is expected to advocate for a four-year extension; and like their predecessors, some lawmakers see it as leverage they can hold over the mayor in other disputes.

Adams is gearing up for a battle with echoes of 2022, when he suffered a major defeat in the form of a two-year extension — a far cry from the four years he originally sought with Hochul’s backing. To make matters worse for the mayor, legislators surprised him with a costly mandate to reduce class sizes, a priority of the city’s teachers union.

Adams now heads to Albany weakened by low approval ratings, pushback to his mandated budget cuts and a federal probe into his 2021 campaign — despite reported improvements in City Hall’s intergovernmental operation.

At the same time, lawmakers have expressed reservations about continuing mayoral control if Adams does not comply with a law requiring the city to cap classes at 20 to 25 students, depending on the grade, by 2028.

Adams appears to be conscious of the challenges ahead: He met with top leaders in the Assembly and Senate in Albany on Tuesday ahead of the governor’s State of the State address, and he pointed to achievements like a new reading curriculum mandate, efforts to boost career development for children and a rise in test scores during a television interview.

He brushed off the possibility that pending state study could sway lawmakers away from his corner.

“There's going to be different opinions and views, but we can come together and continue the success that we have already displayed,” he said on Spectrum’s “Capitol Tonight” this week. “We have displayed the success that New Yorkers are expecting for our children.”

When asked for comment, a City Hall spokesperson referred POLITICO to those comments.

Nathaniel Styer, a city Department of Education spokesperson, said the mayoral control system allows for increased transparency, parental involvement and “meaningful accountability.”

“Extending mayoral accountability is about putting our children’s progress — not politics — front-and-center,” Styer said in a statement. “Reverting from this system would be a significant step backwards for our city’s children.”

When asked about his plans concerning mayoral control, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the Legislature is awaiting the departmental review and simply said, “we’ll see.” A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said the conference will be discussing mayoral control and is taking it “seriously.” A spokesperson for the governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

How Adams got here

In 2022, Adams got the green light to continue overseeing schools for two years, with strings attached.

The short extension came with tweaks to the Panel for Educational Policy, the Department of Education’s governing body — something Adams argued would diminish “the power of mayoral accountability.”

Those changes included increasing the number of panel members to 23 from 15, in an effort to boost parental representation, and a one-year term for members that can be renewed. The mayor and the borough presidents can also no longer remove appointees for voting differently from what they desire.

The mayor still appoints the majority of the members and maintains the unilateral power to hire and fire the schools chancellor. As part of the agreement, the state Education Department is also required to conduct an assessment of mayoral control.

Lawmakers also included a companion bill codifying limits on class size for the first time — a move whose price tag Adams has lamented. City education officials anticipate it will cost $1.4 billion to $1.9 billion to hire 10,000 to 12,000 additional teachers.

Under the previous system — set up in 1969 to give parents more control over schools following demands by Black and brown parents — 32 community school boards and the Board of Education managed the system, with the Board of Education selecting the chancellor and formulating policies.

But Mike Bloomberg convinced the Legislature to give him control over the school system in 2002, in one of his first major acts as mayor — a gambit bolstered by the fact that the school board system was seen as corrupt and rife with patronage.

Temperature among lawmakers

More than 20 years later, Adams is undergoing a new version of Bloomberg’s old fight.

State Senator Iwen Chu said she plans to weigh input from parents and teachers before making a decision.

“I do believe that parents should have a say,” Chu said.

Still, Adams has some support: Michael Benedetto, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Assembly’s Education Committee, once advocated for a six-year extension. He isn’t proposing a specific time frame just yet, but wants the mayor and schools Chancellor David Banks to receive a “bit more time.”

State Senator Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn), whom Adams endorsed for reelection in 2022, proposed a minimum two-year extension to get Adams through the rest of his term, which ends in 2025, and suggested revisiting it after that time.

“There [are] lots of ways for parents to get involved, there’s lots of ways for communities to get involved but I think having an ability to keep the mayor and the chancellor accountable is kind of the strongest point within the context of this current system,” Parker said.

Mayoral control has been renewed several times since its inception. But the mood at recent state hearings indicates growing dissatisfaction with the structure, as many speakers signaled their desire to see the system terminated or tweaked.

And it’s emblematic of the system’s waning popularity in other parts of the country.

Chicago is in the process of transitioning to an elected school board. Last year, Boston’s City Council also advanced a proposal to end mayoral control and shift to an elected school board, but Boston Mayor Michelle Wu vetoed the proposal.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers — which recently sued Adams over education budget cuts — is planning to lobby lawmakers in Albany to push for changes to mayoral control, including boosting the number of non-mayoral appointees on the DOE’s governing body and giving community education councils more decision-making power.

“There has to be more people not beholden to him than are beholden to him on that committee,” Mulgrew said. “We also believe that the CECs should actually have real teeth when it comes to decisions … basically about physical use of the schools inside of their communities and districts.”

The teachers union — which in 2022 called for extending mayoral control but with changes and fixed terms for panel members — skipped a rally that Adams held that year along with some unions in support of an extension.

The Education Council Consortium, a grassroots organization made up of parent leaders, has long advocated for a commission to develop an alternative to mayoral control, and urged Rosa to include such a recommendation in her report. Its president, NeQuan McLean, said mayoral control should eventually end but added that Adams "needs to finish his term with mayoral control with tweaks to the system, as we begin to identify the best system."

Katelyn Cordero and Nick Reisman contributed to this report.