There is a battle going on in Albany about whether and how to renew mayoral control.
The bottom line is that the Republican controlled State Senate hates Mayor de Blasio and so does Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The leader of the State Senate has offered two alternatives: either a one-year extension with an inspector appointed by Governor Cuomo (to harass Mayor de Blasio).
Or a three-year extension, loaded with poison pills. Both alternatives have goodies for Eva Moskowitz and others.
Both Senate bills also include a sweetener for a pocket of the charter school sector and a legislative priority for the New York State United Teachers.
If either bill were ultimately passed, teachers at charters with teacher-training programs would have three years to become certified. The little-known certification fight has been a top legislative priority for Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, whose legion of local charters is largely staffed with uncertified teachers. Moskowitz would essentially require the proposed certification law in order to grow her charter network as planned to 50 or even 100 schools.
Both proposals also include a provision that would prevent districts without teacher evaluation plans from being financially penalized by the state. If passed, that provision would be a win both for teachers’ unions and for Flanagan’s — and Senate education committee Carl Marcellino’s — constituents on Long Island, where evaluations are particularly contentious.
And, in what would be a win for de Blasio, the Senate’s three-year extension bill includes a provision on employee protections for school bus drivers — a legislative priority for the mayor for several years.
But it’s likely that some of those sweeteners will be traded for others as the Senate and Assembly debate final mayoral control logistics in the coming days.
This year’s mayoral control fight has gotten politically messy in recent weeks.
Here is the inside scoop on mayoral control. It is no panacea. Cleveland and Chicago have mayoral control, and no district should copy them.
NYC has long had some form of mayoral control, except for 1969-2002. All those other years, the mayor appointed the Board of Education, and the Board of Education was an independent agency: it hired and fired the superintendent and approved the budget. Under the current ridiculous model, the mayor controls the board, hires the Chancellor, and makes all decisions for the board. Here is my take on mayoral control.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/06/john-flanagan-new-mayoral-control-schools-bills-assembly-few-options-102840#ixzz4Bfy5ncVU
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
What is the opposite of Mayoral control? Elected school boards?
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Either way, the “reformers” are looking for magic. http://www.ciedieaech.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/magic-mayors
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A three-year certification for charters will ensure that none of their novice and/or alternate route teachers are EVER certified. It is bad enough that they are allowed to hire uncertified teachers with “X” percentage of certified teachers. It is unconscionable that TFA is granted highly qualified status alongside trained, licensed, certified teachers.
Shame on them all.
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Either a one-year renewal or a total lapse would be victories for New York City public school parents and taxpayers.
The ultimate goal, of course, is to have the exact same democratically elected school board as 99%+ of the school districts in America have, with full appointment and budgetary control. Like Scarsdale, like Los Angeles.
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No, that isn’t the ultimate goal.
The ultimate goal is to put the school board into the hands of the privatizers. When Mayor Bloomberg helped his pals raid the DOE coffers, Albany was delighted to give him very long term Mayoral control. Mayor de Blasio acted in the interests of ALL the students in NYC — not in the interests of privatizers who gave lip service to acting in the interests of those kids failed by public schools who actually did not want to teach any of them who weren’t “strivers”.
No doubt if a Mayor like Ruben Diaz Jr, whom Eva Moskowitz has already bundled $15,000 for, is elected, Albany will happily cede control for as long as he wants.
Albany knows how to do exactly what the big donors who fund the politicians want.
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If Wall Street wants something, Cuomo is ithe go-to guy.
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The NYC DOE serves over 1 million students. Right now none of their parents have any say in how this behemoth is run. In smaller communities, school boards are elected. Local control, not mayoral control (and certainly not Federal control via carrots and sticks), should be the goal.
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Only a one-year renewal for mayoral control–a huge victory for New York City families.
http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2016/06/sources-tentative-deal-would-renew-mayoral-control-for-one-year-102974
There are 365 days to apply a full-court press on Albany to let the mayoral control law sunset and to change state and city laws to allow for a single democratically elected school board, totally independent of the mayor. The kind they have in Scarsdale and Los Angeles.
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