For more than twenty years, New York City’s mayors have fought to retain a firm hold on America’s largest public school system. Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and frontrunner in the city’s mayoral race, wants to loosen that grip.
If elected, Mamdani plans to overhaul a system of “mayoral control” introduced by Michael Bloomberg in 2002, an arrangement that gave the city’s executive sweeping powers over nearly one million students. He envisions a model of co-governance, one that shares authority among parents, teachers, and local councils, in what he calls a pathway to greater accountability and equity. Critics, however, see in it the makings of confusion and dysfunction.
A Turning Point in New York’s Educational Story
The proposal marks an extraordinary departure from precedent. Since Bloomberg persuaded the state legislature to centralise control, successive mayors — from Bill de Blasio to Eric Adams — have defended the arrangement as essential to decisive reform. They argue that central command has allowed the city to act quickly, citing initiatives such as new reading curricula and pandemic recovery plans.
Mamdani disagrees. He contends that what began as an antidote to corruption within local school boards has hardened into “a culture of secrecy and patronage at the top.” His campaign pledges to widen the role of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy and empower parents and educators, while retaining mayoral oversight of major appointments and strategic shifts. The details, he concedes, are still being refined.
“The stakes of these things are such that you want to make sure you are sure when you are laying out any one of these proposals,” Mamdani said in a PIX 11 interview last week.
A System Under Strain
The context for this debate is sobering. New York’s school system faces persistent absenteeism, growing numbers of homeless students, stark racial disparities in outcomes, and financial pressures from both federal cuts and a state law mandating smaller classes. To Mamdani’s supporters, redistributing authority is the only way to confront these layered challenges.
Progressive education advocate Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, co-executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, told Politico that Bloomberg’s original model was designed “to consolidate power,” and that giving a new structure time to evolve is essential: “We have to make it work and figure it out, just as they did for mayoral control.”
The Limits of Centralised Power
Under the current system, the mayor directly runs the Department of Education, appoints the schools chancellor, and selects most members of the 24-person policy panel. Supporters describe this as a mechanism of accountability — one person ultimately responsible for performance across the system.
“You cannot advance a progressive agenda for the entire school system without running the entire school system,” said David Bloomfield, professor of educational leadership at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, in an interaction with Politico.
But critics see an imbalance of power. Parent leaders and education advocates point out that the model marginalises community voices and risks turning policymaking into political theatre. As NeQuan McLean of the Education Council Consortium said, corruption has not disappeared under mayoral control: “They can talk about how corrupt school boards were, but we have seen corruption in this system too,” Politico reports.
Learning From Other Cities
Mamdani’s proposal would not be without precedent. Chicago has already legislated a transition to an elected school board, while Los Angeles and Detroit have experimented with hybrid forms of governance. Gregory Faulkner, chair of New York’s Panel for Educational Policy, supports a middle ground: mayoral accountability paired with an independent panel whose members serve fixed terms.
“The mayor should appoint the majority,” Faulkner told Politico, “but once appointed they should have a fixed term without the ability to be reappointed.”
Albany’s Next Test
The true test for Mamdani’s idea will come not in City Hall but in Albany. The current structure expires next year, and renewal will depend on the governor and state legislature. The lawmakers remain divided, with some signalling openness to reform and others cautioning against upheaval.
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said she has shared the department’s 281-page report on mayoral control with both Mamdani and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo. While declining to endorse any proposal, she expressed hope that “the next mayor and state lawmakers will take the document and make it actionable.”
Governor Kathy Hochul, who has long supported extending mayoral control, has yet to discuss the issue with Mamdani. A spokesperson for her office told Politico that the governor “remains committed to ensuring accountability so every New York City resident receives a high-quality education.”
A Question of Who Leads, and Who Listens
The politics of education in New York have always been a proxy for something larger: who has the right to shape the city’s future. Mamdani’s critics warn that dispersing power risks paralysis; his supporters see it as the first step towards genuine inclusion.
As state senator John Liu, chair of the legislature’s New York City Education Committee and a Mamdani ally, told Politico, “The biggest hang-up right now is there is no agreement on what to replace mayoral control with, other than the fact that we are not going back to 2001.”
For now, the democratic socialist’s proposal is more principle than plan. Yet in a city where questions of power, trust, and equity are perennial, Mamdani’s vision offers a new kind of challenge: not merely to control the schools, but to share them.