Gov urges 4-year extension of mayoral school control, twice length of previous OK Eric, budget chief: Good econ news, ‘soft landing’ a big help
Gov. Hochul on Tuesday proposed extending mayoral control of the city’s public schools by four years, throwing her support behind one of the Adams administration’s priorities for this legislative session.
But such a renewal, included in the governor’s executive budget, is expected to face strong headwinds from lawmakers and preempted a state review of school governance coming in the early spring.
“I once again support New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ request to continue mayoral accountability for the school system for another four years,” Hochul said during her budget address in Albany.
Last time mayoral control was renewed, in 2022, Adams was granted power over the schools for only two years with new caveats, a decision he saw as a slap in the face.
The state Education Department was tasked with studying school governance through public hearings and a review of two decades of mayoral control and other public school systems, such as in Chicago or Boston, where the model is falling out of favor. Lawmakers also expanded the Panel for Educational Policy, the city’s school board with most members selected by Adams, to include more parent representatives but added mayoral appointees to balance out their votes.
The report is coming at the end of March — and while it does not include recommendations, it was expected to inform lawmakers’ decision-making on extending mayoral control.
“It’s premature and not logical,” state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), chairman of the New York City Education Committee, said of the governor’s Tuesday proposal, which he added does not have a fiscal impact.
“We don’t begrudge the fact that she wants to work closely with Mayor Adams, but this is a big issue,” he said. “It’s a weighty decision that falls on the state. And we are awaiting the completion of the [state Education Department] study on school governance.”
Many of the speakers who are choosing to attend the hearings have no longer been content with the status quo. At three sessions so far, out of a total of five across all boroughs, frustrated teachers and parents have questioned its effectiveness and pushed for models that offer more checks and balances on the mayor’s unilateral power over the public schools.
“We hope to have the findings and that will go to the governor and the Legislature,” state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa told reporters at one of those hearings last week, in Brooklyn. “And then it’s their work after that.”
If not extended, mayoral control would expire at the end of June. The model of school governance has been extended several times over the past two decades under former Mayors Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio.
“We sense a real productivity in the Department of Education,” Adams told reporters this month. “Everything from giving our children quality food to what we’ve done with Summer Rising to the test scores outpacing the state. So we’re seeing some real W’s [wins]. I think give us the opportunity to continue, like we gave to other mayors.”
Hochul’s show of support for Adams on Tuesday came alongside several other favorable budget proposals to the administration, including most notably state aid for the city’s migrant-related costs.
The governor also recommended a 2.4% increase in state aid for schools to $35.3 billion, a record high. Some lawmakers and advocates are pushing for a larger boost to cover the current rate of inflation and help buoy some programs funded by federal pandemic aid that will expire by next school year.
Amid much better revenue flow than predicted, Mayor Adams announced Tuesday that the city won't be cutting funding to its agencies as deeply as initially expected.
Adams' preliminary budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which comes in at $109.4 billion, includes revised revenue projections totaling an additional $2.9 billion over the next two years — $1.3 billion in additional cash flow to the city in 2024 and $1.6 billion in added revenue in 2025 compared with projections his administration released in November.
Adams and his budget director, Jacques Jiha, attributed those more optimistic fiscal forecasts largely to the improving economy, which ultimately upended previous predictions that a recession was coming.
“Most economists were predicting a hard landing of the economy,” Jiha said Tuesday during a City Hall press briefing. “We had 11 consecutive increases in interest rates. So economists were projecting a recession more or less. Fortunately, we managed to avoid that recession. We had a soft landing.”
That, Jiha noted, led to higher than expected revenue.
The projections released by the administration Tuesday flew in the face of its previous, much more conservative estimates and ended up being about double what the City Council had predicted. On top of that, the Council's predictions were higher than initial estimates from the Adams administration, sparking a war of words that's dragged on between the two branches of city government for weeks.
What does it all mean for the city? Here are some takeaways from Tuesday's news on the city budget.
More cuts
After Adams' budget announcement, Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan said it confirmed what the Council's budget team has forecasted and pointed to what he views as the administration's efforts to convince the federal government to pony up more financial aid.
That didn't work, he said, which will, in part lead to the mayor's Office of Management and Budget to make more cuts.
“We have nihilist House Republicans who would rather see the city burn to the ground than help us out,” Brannan said, referring to the relatively paltry amount of federal aid the city has received. “We're on our own here. The mayor and our side agree on that. We're thankful that we're finally getting some help from Albany, but this is not something that we can manage on our own. There's still going to be cuts ahead. This isn't ‘Happy days are here again.'”
Some cuts will be smaller than expected
The next round of cuts to some city agencies will be lower than the administration initially expected.
The last round of the austerity measures, known as Programs to Eliminate the Gap or PEGs, were rolled out by Adams' team in November. At the time, 5% cuts were expected across the board for this month.
But on Tuesday, city officials said those percentages were lowered to 0.6% for the Education Department, 2.7% for the Department of Social Services, 1.8% for the Department for the Aging and 0.5% for the Department of Youth and Community Development.
Albany help for migrant crisis
Exactly how much financial aid from Albany the city can expect in the coming months is not entirely clear, based on what city officials said Tuesday.
Hours before Adams' budget announcement, Gov. Hochul unveiled her $233 billion fiscal plan, which includes $2.4 billion to the city to assist with the migrant crisis.
But, according to Jiha, the city's new spending plan only includes $1.5 billion in expected money for migrants coming in from the state during the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.
“We're still reviewing the governor's proposal,” Jiha said Tuesday, adding that it's unclear to him if the $2.4 billion reflects, in part, previous financial commitments Hochul made to the city.