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KLEIN DIGS IN HIS HEELS ON MAYORAL CONTROL

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein drew a line in the sand last night, saying the city will fight any efforts to weaken the mayor’s authority over running the schools.

But Klein added that he’s seriously entertaining proposals to spur more parental and community input as part of negotiations with the state Legislature to extend mayoral control.

The school-governance law expires June 30.

Klein shot down recommendations that would loosen the mayor’s grip over the panel that votes on education policy. Mayor Bloomberg currently appoints eight of the 13 members and hires the chancellor.

Some opponents — including the United Federation of Teachers — want to slice Hizzoner’s selections to less than half.

And the chancellor said requiring fixed terms for board members, as some have proposed, would gut mayoral control. The members currently serve at the pleasure of the mayor.

“If the mayor is overridden by the board, then he’s no longer accountable,” said Klein, who spoke at a forum on mayoral control sponsored by the Citizens Union and Baruch College, which hosted the meeting.

“You’re going back to the old Board of Education. It was crazy. It was a prescription for failure and paralysis. That’s where policy runs amok.”

That echoed Mayor Bloomberg’s line earlier yesterday in Brooklyn.

“That’s not mayoral control,” Bloomberg declared. “You can call it anything you want, but it’s not mayoral control.”

Forum panelist and Baruch College Professor Joseph Viteritti said there’s a “strong consensus for mayoral control . . . Mayoral control is here to stay.”

But Viteritti said the policy board should be more than advisory, and insisted that a more “democratic” process be put in place without undermining Bloomberg’s authority.

Viteritti then asked Klein if he’d be willing to replicate the advisory role that community boards have on land-use issues as part of school governance.

“Happy to,” Klein responded.

The chancellor said he and Mayor Bloomberg would also “look into” supporting an independent parent-resource center as part of any deal on mayoral control.

Bloomberg and Klein also got good news from Albany yesterday.

Both Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith said they back a law that would continue giving the mayor majority control of the policy board.

“It’s the mayoral appointees who make the ultimate decision,” Silver said. “I think I’m fine with that.”

But Silver wouldn’t take a position on whether the mayor’s appointees should serve fixed terms.

Smith said, “I think the panel is important. That the mayor has most of those appointees, I don’t have a problem with that.”

He added that he believes the appointees should serve at the mayor’s behest rather than in fixed terms, “because you have to be able to have some discipline.”

Insiders say the question over whether the mayor will continue to have a majority of appointments to the policy board is being debated only on the fringes.

david.seifman@nypost.com