When Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office on Jan. 1, he\u2019ll preside over the nation\u2019s largest school system \u2014 but one facing significant challenges, including shrinking enrollment and potential budget crunches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And his opposition to mayoral control of the city\u2019s schools has raised big questions about what would come in its wake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will take over a school system facing sugnificant challenges, including falling enrollment
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He has said he’s opposed to the current system of mayoral control of the city’s schools
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But it’s unclear what an alternative system might look like<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he had an off-the-shelf solution, I think he would have presented it,\u201d Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, said. \u201cWe’ve not heard that, but what we have heard is a desire to uplift the voices and experiences of stakeholders such as parents, community leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next mayor won\u2019t be the only person to shape what future governance of schools would look like: It\u2019s ultimately up to Albany, where State Sen. John Liu, another mayoral control critic who endorsed Mamdani, chairs the committee on New York City education.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The current state law authorizing mayoral control expires June 30 \u2014 and if it weren\u2019t renewed, the city would revert back to a much-maligned system of decentralized school boards.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no chance that that’s going to happen,\u201d Liu said.<\/p>\n
Liu says the real question is whether the state legislature will simply extend the current system as is, and if so, for how long \u2014 or if lawmakers will make modifications, or even scrap it entirely for something new. Any significant changes would need to be phased in, he says.<\/p>\n
In recent years, state lawmakers have made tweaks, including expanding the citywide Panel for Educational Policy. But Liu notes much of the mayor\u2019s power comes from unilaterally hiring and firing the schools chancellor, something Mamdani has not necessarily seemed eager to give up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs magnanimous as he may be for input, I haven’t heard him thinking of relinquishing his power to appoint and to force the schools chancellor, but we’ll see,\u201d Liu said.<\/p>\n
Choosing a chancellor will be Mamdani\u2019s first big decision when it comes to city schools. Whoever he picks will have to deal with a system that has seen declining enrollment. This fall, the student population fell by 2.4%, to 884,000.<\/p>\n
Pallas says there may be many reasons for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cMigration patterns both in and out of the city. There are changes in birth rates so that we have smaller cohorts, not just here in New York City, but all over the country. And systems that have become accustomed to having stable enrollments and have budgeted for particular numbers face some challenges when the numbers drop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The city has so far not penalized individual schools financially for lower enrollment than they expected \u2014 but that may not last forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere may need to be some recalibration in the budget for the department, which of course is a significant portion of the city’s overall budget at around $41 billion total. That may that may need to come down. That’s not going to be fun,\u201d Pallas said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office on Jan. 1, he\u2019ll preside over the nation\u2019s largest school system \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[203,109,25,67,5215,9,24,55,54,56,87,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-32226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-app-education","9":"tag-app-local-state-politics","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-jillian-jorgensen","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-city-news","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}