Metro

Albany bids to strip Mike’s school control

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State lawmakers have introduced legislation that would repeal mayoral control of the city school system — a move that would undo one of Mayor Bloomberg’s crowning achievements, The Post has learned.

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) claim that the 10-year experiment giving City Hall sole power over educational matters has been a failure.

And Montgomery has won the support of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Westchester), who has signed on as co-sponsor to the measure.

The mayoral control law is not up renewal until June 30, 2015. But under their bills, the two legislators call for overhauling the law this year.

“There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control and creating a more independent board in terms of setting educational policy and hiring the chancellor. This bill does that,” Montgomery said.

But Bloomberg’s office charged the legislators are doing the bidding of the powerful United Federation of Teachers, whose clout has been diminished under mayoral control, rather than serving the interests of kids.

Montgomery has received more than $25,000 in campaign contributions from the teachers union over the past decade, state Board of Elections records show.

“While we understand that the teachers union would like mayoral control repealed so it can run the school system again, we are confident that the Legislature won’t return the city to those bad old days of dysfunction and corruption,” said mayoral spokesman Mark Botnick.

The state Legislature passed the law in 2002 putting Bloomberg directly in charge of the schools — giving him a majority of appointments to the Board of Education to set educational policy and the authority to hire the chancellor.

At the time, there was broad sentiment that the “independent” policy board was often divided and dysfunctional as it churned through chancellors and hindered school reform.

Legislators agreed it made more sense to make the mayor responsible and accountable for education, like other city services.

Under mayoral control, Bloomberg’s Department of Education has imposed more accountability and provided more choice for parents and students by closing more than a hundred mostly large, low-performing schools and replacing them with more smaller schools and charter schools.

But it’s precisely these changes that the lawmakers cite in fueling their bid to roll back mayoral control. Both Montgomery and Wright have opposed school closings and co-locating charter schools in facilities with traditional public schools.

“It’s been a very unpopular process having this top-down decision-making with no one able to weigh in. Having a singular authority with total power on all the decisions has not worked out for all of the children,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery’s bill would strip the mayor’s control over school policy by cutting his appointments to the 13-member citywide school board in half, from eight to four members. The City Council would appoint four members and the borough presidents one apiece.

And the board, rather than the mayor, would select the chancellor.

Wright’s slightly different bill would create a nine-member board with just two appointed by the mayor. Five others would be named by the borough presidents and one apiece by the state education commissioner and City Council.