Hearings and testimony on need to reform Mayoral control from Diane Ravitch, parents, and advocates

Above is a video of the City Council hearing last week on Mayoral control, also available here.  There were incisive questions from the new Education Committee Chair, Eric Dinowitz, as well as from several other council members.  Also impressive were the oral testimonies of many parents, advocates and former students about how this governance system without any checks and balances  at the local level or community input was inherently undemocratic and had led to unjust and damaging  policies.   

Dinowitz expressed skepticism of claims of learning gains under Mayoral control, given the lagging results in the NAEPs-- the only reliable data on achievement, as opposed to the state test results which are erratically designed at best.  He also pointed out how  graduation rates can be artificially inflated through the use of credit recovery and the like.  He was also critical of HMH Reading, the most commonly used of the mandated box curriculums.

He asked about the DOE contracting process, which over the last 23 years under Mayoral control hashas wasted millions of dollars on useless or corrupt products and vendors, and whether it was true that the Panel for Educational Policy's Contract committee had been dissolved -- which in the past had provided one of the few occasions where the DOE was forced to explain the rationale for proposed contracts before the PEP meeting at which they will be voted upon.  Now PEP members are briefed privately on proposed contracts, and are told they are not to reveal what they haave been told to any member of the public.

DOE officials seemed confused as initially claimed that the Contract Committee still existed, until they conceded that indeed it had been eliminated, but refused to say that they would support such a Committee being restored and mandated in  law.   

There was also some confusion as to whether PEP members were sent resolutions by DOE that CECs had passed on relevant proposals they would be voting on, such as co-locations and school closures.  It turns out they are not, though Katie Jedrelink of DOE  said that CECs could send them directly to the PEP members if they liked. I subsequently pointed out that for years, the DOE website lacked the names of many members of the PEP, and  in even more frequently their email adddresses, making it impossible for the public to contact them.  This lack of information provided for members of the school board of the nation's large school district exists no where else in the country, to my knowledge.  After years of complaining about this matter, I was informed the day before the hearings that they had finally posted all the names and the email addresses of  PEP members, though I have heard from several that it is difficult for them to access their DOE emails, for reasons I don't understand.. 

Other Council Members also asked good questions, including former Education Chair Rita Joseph, who asked them what would be done to improve parent participation, given that only 2% of parents had voted in the recent CEC elections, and also how mistakes had been made in the process, including names of candidates omitted from the voting website.  CM Carmen de la Rosa also had particularly pointed questions related to the lack of adequate space planning by the DOE to allow schools to lower class size in compliance with the state law.  

Below are five of the written testimonies, first from  NYC school historian and education advocate Diane Ravitch, followed with my testimony for Class Size Matters , then  Jonathan Greenberg of the Educational Council Consortium, Naveed Hasan, PEP member and parent leader, and Naila Rosario, President of NYC Kids PAC.

All five of us pointed out the deep inherent flaws with what is essentially dictatorial, one-man rule, and the Mayoral majority on the Panel for Education Policy should be eliminated, to make it less of a rubberstamp.   Each of us also  proposed other reforms.  Check them out! 

 

 

In my testimony, I provide a list of major, multimillion dollars examples of waste and corruption under Mayoral control -- in the text and in the Appendix. Just two days after the hearing, yet another major scandal erupted: Kevin Taylor, the head of the School Safety division was indicted for bribery along with the CEO of the SaferWatch company, who had paid Taylor as well as Terence Banks, the brother of Chancellor Banks to promote the device to DOE, although Terence Banks has not been indicted. 

 See this story here and the indictment here. 

 

Here is the written testimony of Jonathan Greenberg of the Educational Council Consortium, which represents many leaders of Community Education Councils. 

 

Following are the views of Naveed Hasan, a Manhattan parent representative on the Panel for Educational Policy.

 

Finally, last but not least, the testimony of Naila Rosario, the President of NYC Kids PAC, who points out how Mayor Mamdani has left his supporters in the lurch, by reversing his position on mayoral control, one of his central education positions, without explaining why.

"Conversations with the Chancellor" starting next week

The new Chancellor Kamar Samuels  announced dates and times  for Our Schools. Our Future: Conversations with the Chancellor, a five-borough community engagement series, starting Feb. 10 in Staten Island. 

Here is the DOE description:  "The goal of this tour is for NYCPS leadership to engage with students, families, educators, staff, and community partners on critical school issues, and to hear ideas from families about how to better involve them in decision making processes. "

If you are interested in attending  any of these sessions, and would like to speak about either class size or privacy/AI, please email us at info@classsizematters.org  as this is might be a rare opportunity to make your voice heard on these important issues  You can register at  on.nyc.gov/ChancellorConversations  Click on the image to see which one you'd like to attend.  thanks! 

Craig Garrett on the need for human-centered schools rather than learning based upon AI.

 Craig Garrett is a parent leader in District 14 whose group, District 14 Families for Human Learning, has just created a new website here.  You can sign up for more info at the website.  Below are the comments that he delivered at the D14 CEC meeting last month.  If you agree, please sign our petition for a moratorium on the use of AI in schools here.

    Last night I delivered the following remarks at the end of District 14's CEC meeting, a few minutes after Superintendent Cintron glowingly described his forthcoming "AI vision statement". The first half of the meeting was spent prioritizing urgent funding requests from individual schools (a process one CEC member referred to as "the hunger games"). Mostly of those requests were about fixing problems like inoperable bathrooms and broken PA systems. It really underlined the absurdity of signing multimillion-dollar contracts for unproven ed-tech while our schools can't afford functioning bathrooms. 

    Let's all cast our minds back one year, to early January 2025. At Coney Island, long-shot mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was doing the Polar Bear Plunge in a suit and tie. At movie theaters across the country, kids were flocking to see Moana 2. And from every direction, we were hearing about a revolutionary new technology that was about to transform our lives.

 Back then, the tech industry's story about artificial intelligence was thrilling, provocative, and told entirely in the future tense. Business leaders and elected officials rushed to incorporate AI into their operations. There was a sense of urgency, an eagerness to get on board this magic technology that would solve our most stubborn problems and transport us to a brilliant future.

    Well, I'm here with a message from the present. The  flourishing we were promised has not arrived. We're waking up to the fact that this technology is NOT being developed to extend human capacity or expand human knowledge — because those are not the tech industry's priorities. In 2025 we saw the leading AI companies drop their commitments to democracy and equality,  dismantle their safeguards and moderation, and aggressively fight off any form of regulation, no matter how sensible.

    And unlike in January 2025, we now have real-world data on how their products are performing. In “AI-enabled” classrooms, students are experiencing isolation, cognitive atrophy, and loss of focus. Outside classrooms, LLMs are endorsing suicide, inducing psychosis, and empowering bullies. This is happening because tech companies have decided to prioritize user engagement over safety, dependence over efficacy. And it turns out those decisions are antithetical to human flourishing.

    Just three weeks ago, the Eric Adams administration tried to push four AI ed-tech contracts through the PEP. And they failed, to our great relief, saving NYCPS millions of dollars. Let's hope 2026 is the year our school leaders wake up to the fact that ed tech in its current form is a not just a waste of money, it's a direct threat to our values, our humanity, and our children. 

How I was quoted about Zohran's reversal on Mayoral control -- and my full remarks

Just a quick  update to let you know that yesterday, Zohran Mamdani announced that he was appointing District 3 Superintendent Kamar Samuels as his Chancellor. 

He also said he was renouncing his previous position that Mayoral control needs reform, expressed frequently during his campaign, and that he would ask the Legislature to renew it in June.  He did mention some potential tweaks, to  “improve the parent coordinator position to be a meaningful organizer of parents” and to “restructure meetings so that working parents can actually attend them.”  You can see his entire announcement here.

Both these suggestions, while potentially promising, are a far cry from the fundamental reforms that many parents, teachers and advocates believe should be made to ensure significant checks and balances in the school governance system. 

DOE is unlike any other city agency, in that there is no significant local input into educational decision-making, either from the City Council nor an independent school board, the latter which 98% of districts across the  country already enjoy.  School boards were created to try to take the politics out of education, and though this is essentially impossible, one-man rule in NYC has too often led to wasteful and corrupt contracts, backroom deals, irrational policies and faulty implementation.

I was sitting with my family at lunch when I was alerted to Mamdani’s statements through various chat groups.  I listened to his remarks and began to tweet.  I thought it was important for someone to speak out quickly to counter his claim – that is too often the conventional wisdom --- that Mayoral control leads to more accountability, when the reverse is true, as I explained in my briefing  to the NYC Bar Association.

Surprisingly, both the NY Daily News and the NY Times quoted my remarks in their stories about the Mamdani reversal – but only part of them, so  I’d like to share the whole thread with you, which began in response to a tweet from reporter Ross Barkan: 

@Ross Barkan

Mamdani announces he will support the system of mayoral control after his past disavowal of the system. He promises more input from parents.

 

@leoniehaimson

Very troubling. Every mayor has promised more parent input and then when push comes to shove, they just do what they want. Any system with no locally based checks & balances is inherently dysfunctional & anti- democratic @ZohranKMamdani

 

It has also led to poor policy decisions under every mayor since Bloomberg, and too many backroom deals in which kids needs have been sacrificed for political ends. 

 

One man rule has not worked for our federal government as we’ve seen clearly in 2025. No matter how much @ZohranKMamdani has progressive positions or values, it will not work well for @nycschools either

 

This apparent reversal is indeed an inauspicious beginning to Mamdani’s mayoralty.  I want to assure you that in 2026, we will continue to advocate for real accountability, transparency, and spending focused on what research and experience shows actually works  – including smaller classes – rather than unproven and often risky fads, like AI.

I hope you will help us in achieving these goals as well, by supporting our work in 2026.

 Happy New Year, Leonie

2025: A watershed year for Class Size Matters. Will you support our work to ensure more progress in 2026?

Dear all: 

This has been a watershed year for class size in NYC public schools.  Nearly 750 schools lowered class size this fall to far smaller levels, and about 60% of classes achieved the benchmarks required by the law which we helped pass in 2022.   In these classrooms, many teachers are  ecstatic about the changes they’ve seen, and hundreds of thousands of students are benefiting as a result.  Whether or not your child was among them,  please consider giving to Class Size Matters.

Yet class sizes still vary widely across  the city’s districts and neighborhoods, causing far too many students to struggle.  About 78,500 students in grades K through 5^th are still jammed into classes of twenty five or more, and in middle and high schools, there are more than 24,000 classes of thirty or more with about 760,000  students.

Regrettably, DOE has done little to create space for the hundreds of overcrowded schools that do not have the capacity for smaller classes, either by building enough new schools or annexes, or aligning  their enrollment  to class size goals.  Please donate to our work,  so we can keep fighting for every NYC student  to receive the smaller classes they need and deserve .

Some other highlights of our work in 2025: 

• ·  After we blew the whistle that the School Construction Authority board had lacked its legally required three members for over two years, another member was  finally appointed.  The same thing happened when we pointed out their lack of a mandated whistleblower policy – they created one.

• ·       Along with other advocates, we alerted the NYC Department of Health that Talkspace, which has a $27 million contract with the City to provide online mental health services to teens, was collecting their personal data, sharing it with social media companies, and using it for marketing purposes.  After  months of continued pressure, we finally convinced the DOH  to rewrite their contract with the company, require that Talkspace remove social media trackers from their webpages, and rewrite the Teenspace Privacy Policy. 

• ·       We were the first to reveal publicly that the data of more than 3,000 current and former NYC students in the PowerSchool student information system had been breached, after the DOE had denied this to reporters.  This announcement helped lead to affected families being alerted to the breach, even if belatedly. 

• ·       We persuaded DOE to strengthen their Chancellor’s regulations to include a provision that any individual or company provided with access to personal student information must have a written contract establishing how that information will be protected from further disclosure or misuse. 

• ·       Just a few weeks ago, along with other concerned advocates, teachers and students, we helped persuade the Panel for Educational Policy to reject four proposed DOE contracts with companies selling AI programs.  

• ·       We now have a petition calling on our new Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to enact a moratorium on AI  use in schools so that rigorous protections against harm to students and the environment can be established.  Please sign our petition, if you haven’t already.

There is a theme that runs through all of our work:  to ensure that human relationships are centered in the learning experience of NYC schools.  If you want to help us achieve this goal, please make a tax-deductible donation to Class Size Matters.

Happy New Year,   Leonie