The state Senate remained in unholy deadlock yesterday, with the likeli hood of more of the same today.
Meanwhile, each day that the body fails to renew the law that put the mayor in charge of city schools, new reasons emerge for them to do just that.
Yesterday, for example, Mayor Bloomberg announced that graduation rates climbed in 2008 for the seventh straight year, hitting a new high.
Some 60.7 percent of city high-school students finished their studies within four years, Hizzoner said — a 3.6 percentage-point jump from 2007 and up about 10 points since 2005.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, officials announced that the number of major crimes in city schools fell by nearly 10 percent over the past year — and an impressive 44 percent since 2001, the year before Bloomberg took office.
Mayor Mike first began to crack down on school violence after a troubling spike in 2002 — and after The Post launched a campaign for action.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and NYPD brass boosted the number of safety officers in the schools, created special detention centers, stiffened the disciplinary code and replaced chaotic large high schools with small ones.
But the key to all the gains in the schools — higher graduation rates, better test scores, lower crime — was the 2002 law that put Mayor Mike in charge.
That law, for the first time, made one individual responsible for the quality of the schools: the mayor.
The law also let him introduce new policies. And without those policy shifts, it’s doubtful students would be chalking up such laudable results.
Alas, mayoral control is set to expire in a week — and senators can’t even decide who’s in charge of them. And if they fail to renew the law, the cost — as the evidence shows — will no doubt be huge.
How utterly pathetic that elected officials would make kids in schools pay the price for their fecklessness.