Saving Mayoral Control

Do Mayor de Blasio and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie want to save City Hall’s control of the schools — or do they want to keep standing in the way of a deal? Last week — with mayoral control set to expire this month, absent an agreement by the June 21 close of the legislative session — the mayor finally spoke about it with Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan. He reached out again Monday.

Yet de Blasio shows no willingness to compromise: “We are all for a clean extension of mayoral control that doesn’t play politics or horse-trade off of the backs of our kids,” mayoral spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein told The Post.

Translation: Hizzoner won’t make any concessions at all. He won’t accept any of the three bills Flanagan has offered or even one Senate Independent Democratic Conference leader Jeff Klein just rolled out.

That’s because Flanagan’s bills would broaden school options for families (and thus pose competition for traditional schools, where unions rule). Klein’s bill gives parents greater say in local schools by strengthening Community Education Councils; Team de Blasio says “the CECs are working” just fine now.

Meanwhile, Heastie and the Assembly have passed bills extending mayoral control but linking it to county sales-tax extensions — hoping that would force the Senate to go along. Yet Flanagan is putting kids’ interests first and demanding compromise: “If the Assembly refuses to come to the table, [it runs] the risk that nothing gets done,” a source close to Flanagan says.

Let’s be frank: The unions are pretty much the only ones who want to end City Hall’s control of the schools (in case future mayors aren’t willing to do their bidding). Ending it would be a tragedy.

But mayoral control doesn’t relieve Albany of its duty to oversee public education. And schools under de Blasio have been a disaster, even as he pushed his failed Renewal program, bogus credit-recovery schemes and dubious universal pre-K.

So Flanagan and Klein are right to demand concessions. If de Blasio wants to keep running the schools, he’ll agree to embrace some true compromises — before it’s too late.