The myth of accountability under Mayoral control: my comments at the Manhattan hearing last night

Yet another great hearing where the vast majority of speakers, parents, teachers and students speaking out against Mayoral control.  You can watch the video here.  My three-minutes are below.

My name is Leonie Haimson, and I am the Executive Director of Class Size Matters. There are many myths surrounding Mayoral control, including that it somehow provides more accountability.  Yet as we have seen over the last twenty years, when it comes to class size and the basic conditions in our public schools, one-man rule has not provided even the most minimal accountability.

When he first ran for mayor more than 20 years ago, Bloomberg promised to lower class size in the early grades. His 2002 campaign flyer put it this way: “Studies confirm one of the greatest detriments to learning is an overcrowded classroom … For students a loud packed classroom means a greater chance of falling behind. For teachers, [it] means a tougher time teaching & giving students attention they need.”

Yet class sizes increased sharply during the Bloomberg years, especially in the early grades, and by 2013, his last year in office, they had risen to the highest levels in 15 years, By that time, Bloomberg had renounced his earlier pledge, and proclaimed that he would fire half the teachers and double class sizes if he could, and that would be a “good deal for the students.”

Not only did Bloomberg fail to lower class size, but the DOE during his administration also failed to use state funds meant for smaller classes appropriately and according to law, according to not one, not two, but three different audits from state and city comptrollers.

When Bill De Blasio ran for office, he also promised that he would commit to specific class size reduction goals in all grades, and achieve them by the end of his first term.  He made that promise verbally at a mayoral debate on June 14, 2013, and then checked off a box in a document handed to him at the event, while signing this promise with his name . His campaign also pledged to lower class size, according to a different  survey filled out by his campaign. And yet once elected, he renounced that promise, and said he would wait until all the CFE funding was fully provided by  the state. 

Now that NYC schools are finally receiving their full complement of CFE funding amounting to more than $1.3 Billion in additional annual Aid, the State Legislature overwhelmingly passed a law in June 2022 requiring NYC to phase in smaller class sizes in all grades. 

And yet Mayor Adams is doing everything he can to oppose the law, has increased class size for the last two years, and by his actions is making it impossible for the city to comply, by continuing to cut school budgets and slashing the capital plan for new school construction.

I see no accountability in these actions of any of these mayors. Under Mayoral control, instead, autocratic and failed administrations have repeatedly violated laws concerning special  education, bilingual education, as well as student privacy, the last leading to repeated breaches of the most personal information of literally over a million current and past NYC students.

Moreover, the corruption scandals under local school boards were relatively minor in terms of their scope compared to the millions wasted by corrupt DOE officials over the last 20 years.  It is time for this failed experiment of Mayoral control to end.  Thank you for your time.