Cuomo vs. Sliwa vs. Mamdani on class size, charters & Mayoral control & what Cuomo said to PLACE leaders at their education forum

September 28, 2025

There is going to be a mayoral election in about 37 days.  Since Eric Adams pulled out today, there are now three major candidates. 

Andrew Cuomo, running as an Independent, has an education agenda focused on renewing Mayoral control, closing low-performing schools, expanding charter schools and gifted programs, and refusing to lower class size unless the state provides more funding specifically to implement the class size law. Here is a Power Point with more details on his positions on these and other education issues.  

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican in the race, also wants to continue Mayoral control and expand charters, while continuing to co-locate charter schools in public school buildings.  His website education page doesn't mention class size.  

The proposals of both men are extremely reminiscent of the education policies during the twelve years the Bloomberg administration.

On many of these issues, they are diametrically opposed to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, who wants to amend Mayoral control to allow for more parent and community input, lower class size, and keep the number of charter schools as is, while auditing their practices to ensure more accountability.  Here are his detailed responses on these and other education issues on the NYC Kids PAC survey.

Last Thursday, Cuomo answered questions via Zoom from NYC PLACE parent leaders, whose positions on most of these questions are aligned with his.  There is a YouTube video of this forum here.

During the session, he seemed most passionate about the need to retain Mayoral control as is, several time saying it is "essential" and that "rolling back mayoral control is absurd".  He argued the union is the biggest opponent to continuing the system unchanged, and he would need parents fighting with him to ensure that there are no governance changes when this comes to a vote in Albany.

While expressing support to fund all the programs that PLACE supports, including more gifted programs and selective schools, he was insistent that he strongly opposes lowering class size, unless the state specifically provides more funding for that purpose.  

No mention was made of the fact that the state is providing nearly $2 billion per year in additional Foundation Aid annually in part for this purpose, as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, or that Cuomo himself refused to fund the CFE settlement and for years denied NYC schools full funding while he was Governor.

Though Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat reported that  during the session Cuomo asserted that he would not cap enrollment at lower levels at “desirable” schools to reduce class size as a page on his website  says -- a special priority of PLACE  -- his answer to this question during the forum was actually somewhat different.  

He repeated that he would exempt all schools from having to lower class size unless the city received more funding for that purpose, and didn't make any distinction for so-called "desirable” schools.  Even after being pressed on this matter, he said, "Either they have to give you the money or they have to give you an exemption."

Cuomo also said he would expand the police force and the number of School Safety Agents in schools. Strangely, he wrongly claimed School Safety Agents were currently under the control of DOE rather than police. 

Perhaps the biggest news from the night was that he said he would consult with PLACE leaders before selecting a new Chancellor.   For those who would rather not watch the entire video,  a transcript of his remarks is below.  

Please help us stop looming budget cuts to schools!

NY Governor Cuomo has signaled that he is preparing to make huge cuts in the education budget for next year and will be successful unless the State Legislature stands in his way.   The deadline on finalizing the state budget is supposed to happen this Tuesday by midnight.

Please send a message to your state legislators now, NOT to cut vital education funding, as the state can raise revenue in a variety of ways:  by increasing taxes on ultra-wealthy individuals, by taxing the carried interest income of hedge funders the same as regular income, and imposing sales taxes on the purchase of yachts and private planes, without hurting our students and schools.

In most districts, schools haven’t even recovered from the 2008 recession in terms of the loss of services and increases in class size — they can’t afford to lose even more ground.  The evidence does not support the claim that this will cause millionaires and billionaires to move out of state.

 Just click here to send a message; feel free to revise it any way you like by adding your own thoughts.

With hubbub over teacher evaluation deadline, city escapes scrutiny for missing C4E deadline by months

There has been much public furor over the coming deadline for a new teacher evaluation system in NYC that will be based at least in part on student test scores.  Though supporters like Commissioner King and Merryl Tisch say a new system is necessary to have a more objective basis for teacher evaluation, experts like Bruce Baker of Rutgers and many others have shown that the “growth scores” the evaluation system will depend upon are not only highly volatile from year to year, but are also demonstrably biased against teachers with low-performing students.  And unlike the teacher data reports, the growth scores do not even attempt to control for the class size; meaning that a teacher who has a class of 30 or more will be unfairly judged compared to another who will be teaching 25 or fewer students.

First, Governor Cuomo set a deadline of January 17, 2013, and warned if the UFT and the city did not agree he would withhold about $300 million in additional state aid. Then the corporate reform troika of Students First NY, Students for Education Reform and Educators for Excellence held rallies to highlight the issue. (Ironically, though all three organizations are aligned with the charter school lobby, charters will NOT be subject to the same requirements and will likely get more funding whether or not they adopt a new test-based system.) 

Now, Chancellor Walcott has set his own deadline of Dec. 21 and threatened that if the agreement is not made with the UFT by then, he will cut school budgets mid-year, leading to loss of staff, afterschool programs, higher class sizes etc.

But there is another larger pot of money with its own set of deadlines that has been entirely ignored.

In 2007, the state passed a law called the Contracts for Excellence (C4E), to settle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, in which the state’s highest court found that NYC students were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education, in part because of excessive class sizes. As a result, the law required NYC to reduce class size in all grades in exchange for additional state aid.  Each year, NYC receives more than $600 million in C4E funds.  

Yet last year, class sizes went up for the fourth year in a row and are likely to increase again this year, though the state has never withheld a penny from NYC as a result.

In addition, the city has openly violated the public process set out in the law for several years, shutting out parents and other stakeholders in the following ways: 

• ·         The DOE no longer holds borough hearings on its C4E plan; though these are required by law. Instead, District Superintendents provide brief and sketchy power points at CEC meetings that omit mentioning its legal obligation to be reducing class size and its abysmal record in this regard.

• ·         The city’s “proposed” plans are not even presented to the public until late in the fall, and the state often does not approve the plan until months after the funds have already been allocated, making a mockery of the entire process and the public input that is supposed to inform the plan and the state’s approval.

In fact, the State Education Department is so behind its own schedule that it has not yet APPROVED last year’s city’s C4E plan; even though the money has long been spent. 

This year, there has been NO posting of this year’s city’s plan, NO hearings scheduled, and NO public input elicited, though the state’s deadline for publicizing the plan was September 14, and districts were supposed to post their assessment of public comments by October 25, 2012.

Contrast the way NYC has just ignored its obligations with the posting of C4E plans by the cities of Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, and countless others.

It is terribly sad that, in contrast over the intense scrutiny the state, the city and the corporate reform crowd have given the looming deadline a teacher evaluation system, months and years can pass without any accountability for the city’s failure to comply with any deadline when it comes to a law that was supposed to fulfill our children’s constitutional right for a sound basic education.

See below the answers I just received from the State Education Department, when I asked the agency about the status of  the city's C4E plans, last year and this year.

Letter from NYSED re NYC's C4E plans 12.12