Statement on Mayoral Control
Submitted to the New York City Council Education Committee, February 10, 2026
Mayoral control of the public schools has been a disaster for New York City. We urge the Education Committee of the New York City Council to take a hard look at its failings and listen to those who are proposing meaningful alternatives.
This arrangement of one-man governance is a failed experiment. It was foisted upon us with false promises, faulty premises, and misguided assumptions that are still with us. Some of the mythologies have become normalized through repetition by successive mayors. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was looked up to as a wizard of information technology and a corporate success story. The mainstream media believed he could make the system more accountable and provide stability. He promised to free school governance from “politics” and bring efficiency and higher standards.
Instead, he brought a tumult of changes with the massive closings of neighborhood schools, the promotion of charter schools, and unending reorganizations of the system’s administration. With his disparagement of open, public decision-making, he cleared the way for profiteering, influence peddling, and cronyism. The central school board which he christened the Panel for Educational Policy, has functioned as a rubber stamp, approving wasteful contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, often awarding contracts to vendors with records of previous corruption.
Solidarity caucus of the United Federation of Teachers has seen the ill effects of top-down management inside the schools. In 2024 we wrote, “We are here to say that Mayor Bloomberg’s approach was entirely wrong. He spent school resources on wasteful tactics. These tactics tear down and divide, not build and strengthen.” School staffers have seen the rise of administrators, empowered in the manner of company CEOs, running their schools as private fiefdoms. Their powers were enhanced by the reduction of teachers’ ability to grieve file material even when inaccurate or malicious. With district superintendents removed from the grievance process, school leaders gain an unchecked ability to instill fear and compliance from teachers. They have used false accusations and the threat of removal for investigation, and termination. Their lopsided powers were further exaggerated with the Danielson evaluation rubric which guarantees that there will always be something missing in any lesson, and relieves administrators from having to consider a teachers’ lesson on its own merits.
Mayoral Control has not held administrators responsible for modeling lessons that would serve to guide teachers in adapting programs. Solidarity believes that principals that are knowledgeable educators should be able to teach demonstration lessons for their staff. In doing so, principals would clearly see the roadblocks that teachers have in implementing current programs.
Mayoral control has prevented discourse and debate on educational issues, including what educational approaches are already working for students. Scripted curriculums have been implemented, including the NYC Reads Campaign, in the wake of which many richer and more engaging programs were discarded. Instead of assuring stability, we are ever affected by media campaigns about the failure of instruction or some other crisis. We are constantly being asked to focus on new initiatives without the discussion they deserve. Every new mandate inflicted in this manner contains the seeds of another big shift to correct it.
Mayoral Control has also served to silence the voices of teachers. Feedback from educators on the programs used in our schools is essential to achieving success. Teacher’s feedback is not welcomed by a number of principals that serve our city. These same principals are held to little account in making programs work in their schools. All the pressure is on the teacher in the classroom. Teachers are instructed to teach with “fidelity” and yet modify scripted programs to meet the needs of students. However, feedback from teachers is discouraged by many administrators. Oddly enough, this feedback from teachers is exactly what is needed as they are the boots on the ground that make the programs function smoothly.
The state’s mayoral control law has disenfranchised the local citizenry. Mayor Bloomberg’s policies of deregulation and the school-choice model further reduced the role of parents to passive consumers. By destroying neighborhood schools, the city has forced many students to commute long distances to sites not convenient for parents to participate in meetings or other events. Throughout NY State, from Montauk to Buffalo, parents can advocate for their child’s learning. They can attend local board meetings and help direct where their tax dollars are spent. Parents can provide feedback on how programs work for their children. Feedback from parents does not diminish student achievement. It should serve to strengthen school performance.
It is time to empower educators, teachers, and students and to return public schools to the public. It is time to end Mayoral Control in NYC.
