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.

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

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.  

Mayor indicted, Chancellor resigning, and the Panel for Educational Policy eliminates its Contract Committee; so much for Mayoral control!!

 

October 2, 2024: Update: Chancellor Banks announced he is moving up his retirement to Oct. 15, 2024, apparently at the Mayor's request.

Mayor Adams has now been indicted on  five federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.  Chancellor Banks is resigning as of Dec. 31, 2024, to be replaced by Melissa Aviles-Ramos, current Deputy Chancellor for Family Engagement. This follows the announced resignations of other top officials, including the Police Commissioner and Commissioner of Health, in the last two weeks.

We should recall the false narratives promoted by those including Governor Hochul who insisted on extending unchecked Mayoral control for two more years last April, with no strings attached: that any other system invited corruption, instability, and inefficiency. The Mayor himself insisted on renaming Mayoral control "Mayoral Accountability", and Chancellor Banks threatened to resign if the governance system was altered in any significant way. And look at what has happened since. 

The only minor tweak the Legislature made to Mayoral control was that the Chair of the Panel for Educational Policy chair would be appointed by the Mayor from among three nominees put forward by leaders of the Legislature and Board of Regents. And yet it turns out that the new Chair will be exactly the same man who already held that seat as a Mayoral appointee, Greg Faulkner. The only difference is that now the Mayor will get an extra PEP appointee, to further cement his control over controversial educational policies, as well as questionable contracts and spending.

The Chancellor himself was reported having privately met with the CEO of 21stCentEd in October of 2022, and  subsequently greenlit a major contract with this company that had hired his brother, Terrence Banks, as a lobbyist. According to the Daily News,  21stCentEd has since received more than $1.4 million in business from the Department of Education for providing a variety of services. In cases where a family member is involved, the city requires that a Conflict of Interest waiver be obtained.  And yet Banks never applied for one. Both Chancellor Banks and Terence Banks have had their homes raided and their telephones seized by federal investigators.

Terence Banks also apparently lobbied for a Florida-based tech firm called Saferwatch which markets “panic button” apps to be used to alert authorities in case of school emergencies such as fires or active shooters.  The NYPD signed a contract with Saferwatch which was piloted in several schools  last year.

We have seen tremendous privacy problems with Teenspace, an online mental health program for NYC students 13 and up, relentlessly promoted by the Mayor and the Chancellor, after the Department of Health signed a $26 million dollar with the parent company Talkspace last year. And yet as we have discovered, Teenspace collects, shares and uses personal student data for marketing and commercial purposes with multiple social media "partners" that would be illegal if the contract was with the DOE rather than the Department of Health.  When a NYC student visits the Teenspace website on their phone, their personally identifiable information is collected by 34 cookies, and shared with 15 ad trackers, as well as Facebook, Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft among other companies. The company has also been sued in California for sharing personal data with TikTok, including  the mental health data of minors. One should not be surprised to learn that lobbying firm for Talkspace is Oaktree Solutions, the firm owned by Frank Carone,  a close associate and a former chief of staff to the Mayor who was with him last night when Adams was huddling with his attorneys after learning of his federal indictments.

Shortly after he was elected, Mayor Adams own partner,  Tracey Collins, who already worked at DOE,  was promoted and named the “senior adviser to the deputy chancellor of school leadership,” and recieved a 23% boost to her salary to $221,597 a year.  Shortly thereafter, Sharon Adams, the wife of the Mayor’s brother Bernard Adams, was hired by DOE, at a salary of $150,000-a-year .

The whirlwind of scandals and investigations surrounding the Mayor and his top appointees, including the Chancellor, should give rise to a new call for more accountability, oversight and checks and balances at DOE, but I fear that no lessons will be learned by those in power, because their interests lie in maintaining one-person rule, and ignoring the voices of parents and teachers.  Indeed, there have been many cases of large-scale corruption at the DOE under previous administrations. 

Eric Goldstein was hired in 2004 during Bloomberg/Klein years as a deputy overseeing food, transportation and high school sports, and promoted to chief executive in 2007. Goldstein was just recently sentenced to two years in prison, for a corrupt scheme he was involved in 2015-2016, during the De Blasio administration, by receiving bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye to tainted food served to public school kids — including chicken tenders laden with plastic, bones and metal, causing choking.

There is also the recently revealed, shocking case of DOE staffers in the Queens office who took their own kids on trips to Disneyland and other trips by using federal funds meant to provide educational experiences for homeless children.  For some reason, the DOE failed to ask for restitution for the money stolen; and neither the DOE nor the Special Investigator for Schools  reported the alleged fraud, forgery and misuse of federal funds to any authorities for possible prosecution.  To make things even more bizarre, the SCI held off posting its findings report, dated January 2023, for nearly two years after it was completed, and when they did so, they posted it quietly without any press release or notification, perhaps in hopes it would be ignored by the media focused instead on the allegations and investigations surrounding the Mayor.  I have since reported these alleged crimes to the Inspector General's office of the US Department of Education, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

There have been many more multi-million dollar DOE corruption scandals under Mayoral control over the last 20 years, a selection of which I summarized in my testimony to the State Education Department and my presentation last year to the NYC Bar Association, both posted here.

And yet despite all these allegations of cronyism and worse, the first thing that the newly reconstituted Panel for Education Policy did in its first meeting of the new school year on September 25 is to eliminate its Contracts Committee by amending their  Bylaws  as depicted below.

This committee, whose meetings have been livestreamed and recorded, has provided the only public airing of discussion and questioning of DOE officials by PEP members of the rationale behind  hundreds of millions of questionable DOE contracts before the final Panel vote.  The approval to ditch the committee was 13-6, with one abstention.   As usual, every Mayoral appointee plus the new, supposedly "independent" Chair voted in lockstep to eliminate the Contracts Committee and its monthly public meetings.  So much for so-called Mayoral accountability!

ECC Statement Condemning the Undemocratic State Budget Process That Used Mayoral Control as a Political Bargaining Chip

 To see if there's a way forward on this very critical issue, despite the Governor's insistence on cramming a two-year extension of Mayoral control into the state budget, join us for our Parent Action Conference on Saturday May 11 at 10:30 AM-- more info here.

ECC Statement Condemning the Undemocratic State Budget Process That Used Mayoral Control as a Political Bargaining Chip

April 25, 2024

New York State’s 2024-25 budget shows an utter disregard of parents, students, educators and advocates in New York City. When Governor Hochul made school governance into a political bargaining chip by including a 4-year extension of mayoral control in her Executive Budget in January, she knew well that the state legislature mandated report on school governance in New York City, which she called for, was due to be released near the end of March. 

After first agreeing to remove mayoral control from the budget, the governor put it back in the eleventh hour to use mayoral control for horse trading. The final budget agreed upon by the Governor, Majority Leader and Speaker includes a 2-year extension and some superficial changes to the Panel for Educational Policy.  It is as if the report by the Commissioner of the NYS Education Department never existed. 

We condemn this disregard for parents, students, educators and advocates, many of whom made clear in public testimony recorded in NYSED’s report, that we do not want mayoral control. We condemn the Governor’s hypocrisy in her statement, “governance mechanism that’s been in place for many, many years will not be politicized,” when she is the one who politicized it by using it to horse trade in the budget. 

While we recognize the Majority Leader and Speaker fought to keep mayoral control out of the budget, we are disappointed that they conceded in the end and seemingly listened only to the Mayor and the union leadership, neglecting the voices of the parents, students, educators and advocates. 

Mayoral control needed to be debated separately from the state budget. It should never be used as a pawn in budget negotiations, particularly in a year when a comprehensive report assessing the effectiveness of mayoral control was released. The Governor and the legislature are forcing children of NYC public schools to suffer a dysfunctional and grossly inequitable system for two more years without any future possibilities for a new governance system. 

We thank the legislators in both houses who advocated until the last moment on behalf of parents, students, educators and advocates. We will continue to fight for a democratic school governance system in New York City. 

Education Council Consortium Board of Directors