Board of Ed spells trouble for Blasio

If mayoral control is not renewed, the Board of Education — which hasn’t existed in eight years — would be back in business on July 1.

And Mayor de Blasio would be cast to the sidelines.

The board would have the power over every aspect of the sprawling school system, from budgets to policies to appointments. De Blasio would get to name just two of the seven members, with the other five appointed by the borough presidents.

There’s no telling how that would play out.

When mayoral control lapsed in 2009, a reconstituted Board of Education voted to keep Joel Klein as chancellor and let him and thenMayor Mike Bloomberg run the schools until the Legislature gave the reins back to City Hall.

But Bloomberg had willing partners in the borough presidents.

Four of them agreed to appoint board members who would not change the schools’ leadership.

Even so, one of Bloomberg’s top education aides said, it made for a difficult situation.

“I was the last Board of Education president. Let’s keep it that way. That shouldn’t be recreated again,” said Dennis Walcott, former schools chancellor and deputy mayor under Bloomberg. De Blasio may not have it as easy. At least one Beep, Eric Adams of Brooklyn, said he intends to chart an independent course.

“If necessary, I will uphold my responsibility and appoint a representative to the Board of Education on behalf of Brooklyn and its families,” said Adams.

But the Beep — who reportedly has ambitions to run for mayor himself — then listed a litany of complaints he has about the city Department of Education under de Blasio.

“Outstanding issues include under-investment in school-technology infrastructure, significant inequities in allocation of Fair Student Funding dollars, disparities in gifted and talented education, resistance to training and support for new learning devices like tablets, inaction on liberalizing school space-usage policy for community-based organizations and poor community notification on significant changes to school utilization,” Adams said.

Adams said the five borough presidents spoke with one another Thursday and are seeking a meeting with the mayor.

Mayoral control of the schools expires on June 30 and there was no sign Thursday that the Legislature would return in a special session to extend it before then.

Gov. Cuomo took a fine first step toward fixing New York’s subways by naming Joe Lhota MTA chairman. But hold the champagne: It’s only the first of many steps that lie ahead. Lhota’s an excellent choice, with the, uh,

track record to prove it: He ran the agency in 2012 and won universal praise for getting the trains running full tilt within days after Hurricane Sandy hit.

Before that, as a top mayoral aide in the Giuliani era, he oversaw a $36 billion operating budget and played a key role getting the city back on its feet after 9/11.

Even Mayor de Blasio, who faced Lhota in the 2013 mayoral race, tipped his hat to the MTA boss Thursday: “There are few public servants more capable” of fixing the subways than Lhota. De Blasio even offered a rare salute to Cuomo on his choice and pledged his staff ’s support.

Good, because Lhota’s got his work cut out for him — starting with choosing a permanent No. 2. This is vital because Lhota won’t be full-time, as in his last stint at the MTA. In effect, he’ll be chairman of the board, not CEO.

We expect Lhota’s leadership will be a huge improvement. And we know he’ll be honest with the public about the state of the system and what it will take to end the breakdowns and delays quickly. And that he’ll stand up to Cuomo (in private) when the governor needs to hear the word “No.”

After all, Cuomo needs the chairman more than Lhota needs this job — which he was reluctant to take. And that, too, is good: Giving Lhota free rein might be tough for a governor who thinks the answer to any problem is more power for him.

Cuomo’s out-of-the-blue push Tuesday to gain an automatic majority of votes on the MTA board is typical of that. But this week’s board meeting showed why that’s unwise. One by one, the members not named by the gov pointed to problems he’d inflicted on the MTA by making unilateral decisions, such as picking a pointless public fight with Amtrak.

Politics has plainly driven recent bad MTA moves, and may explain the current crisis.

But this week’s news is good: Cuomo made a great choice in tapping Lhota. Now he and de Blasio need to back him up — and give him space to do his job.