Gov. Hochul pushing to include mayoral control of NYC schools in state budget

Gov. Hochul has launched an aggressive last-minute push to use state budget negotiations to extend Eric Adams’ mayoral control of New York City schools, state Sen. John Liu said Monday.

Liu, the Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City Education Committee, said in a brief interview that Hochul is “pushing very hard” on mayoral control, and that the issue could be among the final major remaining roadblocks to a budget deal.

The state budget, negotiated between the Democratic governor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature, was officially due April 1. But a deal has been held up by disagreements on housing and other topics.

The last-minute education push by Hochul reflects the alliance she has formed with Mayor Adams, who requires sign-off from the state to continue running the city’s public schools. At the start of budget talks with lawmakers in January, Hochul proposed a four-year extension of mayoral control.

But both chambers of the Legislature, the Senate and the Assembly, excised the issue when they responded to the governor’s budget plan with blueprints of their own. Leading lawmakers have expressed a preference for dealing with the question later in the legislative session, outside the budget talks.

The governor’s extension proposal appeared dead in the water after the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester County, told reporters bluntly earlier this month that mayoral control would not be in the budget.

But Liu said Monday that he believes that it is possible to do a “short-term extension” with strong guardrails including mayoral accountability on issues such as class size.

The senator has supported smaller classes in city schools. The city is currently in a five-year phase-in period during which classrooms must be reduced to between 20 and 25 students, depending on grade level.

Liu said he was “certainly not” open to a four-year extension. He declined to say how many years a “short-term extension” might last, though the Legislature approved a two-year extension in 2022.

Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, the Bronx Democrat who chairs the Education Committee in his chamber, said by text Monday that he had not been directly informed of the governor’s extension push. But he added he “would not be happy” about it, because he believes the issue should be settled outside of the budget.

Still, he has expressed support for granting an extension outside the budget talks. Last week, he said, “Under mayoral control, we can point our finger at someone if we think they’re not doing a good job.”

A spokesman for Adams, Fabien Levy, declined to comment Monday on Hochul’s push, saying City Hall was waiting to see how negotiations in Albany shook out.

A report published by the state Education Department last week presented an unfavorable picture of how parents and teachers feel about the status quo.

The report found public support for stronger checks on the mayor’s power — a stance held by the local teachers union — and for a commission to consider reforms. Few people who provided feedback for the report, however, called for the return of dozens of local school boards that had been rife with corruption before mayoral control.

Adams was sharply critical of the report.

The study did not find a clear relationship between school governance structures and student achievement. But David Banks, the New York City schools chancellor, suggested there is a connection.

“We need a model that fits the uniqueness of our city, uniting a vast network of schools under steady, consistent leadership,” he told reporters last week.