On New Year’s Day, Zohran Mamdani took office as New York’s 112th mayor, promising a “new era.” But while working-class New Yorkers celebrated Mamdani’s enthusiastic promise to use his power to implement a pro-worker agenda, Mamdani backtracked on a key promise on his education platform.
In a major reversal of his own long held views, Mamdani announced that he would support mayoral control of the city’s schools. While most school districts are governed by elected school boards, in New York City school policy is determined almost exclusively by the mayor. This undemocratic system was implemented and used by previous mayor Michael Bloomberg to enact neoliberal anti-student education reforms including closing schools, increasing the number of charter schools in the city, and ratcheting up high-stakes testing. Eric Adams used his power over city schools to create curriculum mandates that limit teacher creativity and autonomy in the classroom.
Ending mayoral control and giving parents and teachers more of a voice in NYC education has been a longstanding goal of progressive education activists. Mamdani’s turnabout marks a breach of trust with his own base, including the thousands of NYC educators whose doorknocking, phonebanking, and flyering helped get him elected, especially considering that ending mayoral control was the clearest plank of his limited education platform. His only other major promise was to retain the racist Specialized High School Admissions test, which has blocked Black and Latinx admission to prized high schools like Stuyevsant and Bronx Science. Even more troubling, the flip-flop indicates that voices of neoliberal education reform, like Gates-funded and anti-union Educators for Excellence, have the mayor’s ear in the transition process.
When it comes to education, the signals Mamdani is sending are contradictory, but they’re not all negative. Mamdani’s promotion of Kamar Samuel, a local superintendent who implemented diversity efforts in his Upper West Side district, to the position of chancellor suggests that desegregation will be a priority for the new administration. This is a welcome and crucial development, as previous Mayors have ignored the issue, at best leaving it to blue-ribbon commissions. However, it seems that the mayor may have been convinced that retaining mayoral control is a necessary tradeoff, required to maintain executive authority to help de-segregate the most segregated school district in the country. While a return to the previous system of decentralized neighborhood school boards would allow local pro-segregation parents to block policy proposals, a post-mayoral control school system (like the proposed People’s Board of Education) could both maintain centralized policy while allowing democratic input.
But retaining mayoral control is a priority for the city’s ruling class, and for good reason. The neoliberal Bloomberg reforms were crucial for weakening educator unions and centralizing power in an undemocratic NYC Department of Education. DOE policies show a clear and consistent ambition: to control labor costs; undermine the autonomy of teachers, parents, and students; and replace authentic learning with a scripted, sanitized caricature of real education.
We might imagine that, with a leftist mayor in charge, things will be different this time. Mamdani could use his control of the school system to implement reforms that will indeed empower families and educators. But large institutions like the DOE are resistant to change, and losing this opportunity to eliminate mayoral control means future mayors could easily reverse any reforms. Furthermore, creation of democratic institutions for teacher and community input should not be counterposed to implementing left education policy.
And Mamdani’s reversal, along with most of his staffing decisions since winning the election (particularly skipping over former DSA congressman and Bronx principal Jamaal Bowman for the top schools spot), suggests a deep reluctance to rock the boat in a way that will frighten the city’s elite.
Mamdani’s flip-flop points towards a major strategic challenge for rank and file educators facing the incoming progressive administration. Mamdani’s agenda—from taxing the rich to universal childcare, free buses and freezing the rent—is pro-worker, pro-public schools, and popular. We should loudly promote it. But the very nature of governing a city like New York, the epicentre of global capitalism, means there will be immense pressure to maintain the neoliberal status quo.
Only one thing can win the mayor’s agenda, and hopefully broaden it: independent, democratic organization of the city’s working class, perhaps most crucially the city’s school workers and their parent and student allies. This movement will need the workplace power and self-confidence to stand up to the media, the city’s capitalist elite, and perhaps at times the mayor himself. We will need to prepare to both work with the Mamdani administration to fight for the reforms he has promised and also maintain independent pressure on it to go beyond his current promises, and prevent backsliding.
For progressive educators, key questions include:
- Will Mamdani pursue a significant desegregation agenda? Or will he stick to minor reforms that are more cosmetic? The admissions changes pushed by Samuels made only minor changes in class diversity of the Upper West Side schools under his purview, and didn’t have an effect on racial segregation.
- Will Mamdani be willing to touch even more serious segregation issues like curtailing the gifted and talented programs—which middle class public school parents cherish but which also maintain racial division? Will he be willing to change his position by modifying admissions to coveted (and segregated) specialized high schools?
- Beyond desegregation, will he tackle other widely-felt education issues like scripted, mandated curriculum that limit educator professional autonomy to make instruction relevant, engaging and successful for students? Or will neoliberal voices maintain their influence in his administration?
Ultimately, the answer is up to us. A positive outcome will only be possible with continuous organizing to build an independent base in our union locals, school union chapters, and parent and community organizations.
Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Jakub Hałun; modified by Tempest.
