12 JULY 6, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
EDITORIAL
Make mayoral control of schools permanent
Last week, the state legislature
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(subject: Queens Snaps).
finally got around to giving
New York City what it wanted: a
continuation of mayoral control of the
city’s public school system.
State lawmakers in Albany -- about
152 miles north of the fi ve boroughs --
agreed to allow the city to operate its
own schools for two more years. You
don’t need a crystal ball to foresee this
battle being resurrected in June 2019.
So many political footballs exist in
Albany. Mayoral control is the latest
one to be dumped on the fi eld; state
lawmakers kicked it around a bunch
of times in recent years whenever
mayoral control was due for an extension.
There’s no reason to think
that the same won’t happen when
the question arises again two years
from now.
For as long as there’s an expiration
date on the city’s control of its own
public school system, this preposterous
exercise in government
dysfunction will be repeated. We
can’t imagine why a Long Island state
senator or a Buff alo assembly member
would want to block New York City’s
mayor from running the city’s schools
-- unless, of course, they’re interested
in what kind of political favors they
can get out of supporting it.
Well, we say enough is enough. It’s
time for our Queens representatives
in Albany to launch a campaign for a
state constitutional amendment to give
New York City control of its schools
until the end of time.
New York City’s government gets billions
of dollars in aid from the state and
federal government for virtually all of its
functions. State and federal agencies may
pass down mandates and regulations,
but in almost every instance, the city
alone is responsible for appointing the
people needed to manage itself.
The state government doesn’t appoint
the city’s police, fi re or transportation
commissioners, so why should
it appoint our schools chancellor?
Why should it have control over the
functions of the city’s Department of
Education?
In the last year, the city’s public
school system achieved its highest high
school graduation rate ever: 72.6%. The
city has also made strides in changing
the school dynamic to improve overall
academic performance and launched
a highly-successful universal prekindergarten
program.
It is far from perfect, of course. Parental
participation is lacking, and the
city has yet to do anything to give real
power to the Community Education
Councils that replaced Community
School Boards as the voice of parents
in each school district. That, of course,
must change -- but the city alone should
be responsible for its changing.
New York City should control New
York City’s schools. Our lawmakers
must step up now to make it so.
