Mayoral control forever

Even a sharp fifth-grader could figure out why United Federation of Teachers head Mike Mulgrew opposes continuing mayoral control of the city’s gargantuan public school system: He knows that when a bureaucratic blob makes decisions, when accountability is diffuse, his union’s power is at its apex.

What no fifth grader will remember but any honest New Yorker will admit is that the old Board of Education, with members appointed by borough presidents and by the mayor, was a disaster, an invitation for inertia and corruption.

As Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benedetto and the Education Committee he chairs get ready to hold hearings on the subject next week, it’s time for a refresher course. Mayoral control — giving the city’s top elected official say over what ought to be one of his or her top responsibilities — works.

Which is why the late David Dinkins wanted it. Why his successor, Rudy Giuliani, did too. Why Mike Bloomberg got it and used it to infuse what had been a change-resistant system with innovative new approaches.

And why Mayor de Blasio defends it: It delivers real results for kids.

As he put it last week: “between (Bloomberg’s) time as mayor and my time as mayor, the graduation rate has gone up 50%... We could never have done a Pre-K for All without mayoral control. We could never have reopened our schools (during COVID).” Add to that list many of the charter schools that have flourished over the last decade, rising math and English proficiency, and a push to give all high school kids access to Advanced Placement classes.

A sane city would never yank control of the police department from the city’s top elected official and hand it to a panel of bureaucrats. A sane city will never go back on mayoral control of the schools.