A report commissioned by Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith would gut mayoral control of education and make it harder to close failing city schools, The Post has learned.
The draft set of recommendations even calls for resurrecting an “independent” Board of Education that would evaluate the schools chancellor and have more “explicit authority” over budget and policy issues than under the mayoral-dominated system.
The report stresses the need to create a “countervailing body as a check on the chancellor.”
“In striving to achieve a system with more accountability, the law that established mayoral control of school governance has created a system in which the mayor and chancellor have unilateral decision-making authority and are answerable to no one,” state Sen. Martin Malavé Dilan, co-chair of the Senate Democratic School Governance Task Force, wrote in his draft report to Smith.
Dilan (D-Brooklyn) blasted the current Panel on Education Policy as a rubber stamp because a majority of the 13 members are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of Mayor Bloomberg. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is chairman of the board.
“The PEP, in its current form, is not a truly independent body and must be significantly reformed if it is to take on this role,” the report said.
“If it continues to act at the pleasure of the mayor, a new body or a resurrected Board of Education should be established to serve in such a capacity.”
In addition, the Senate report said the schools chancellor should not chair the PEP because it “undermines the panel’s ability to act as a check on the central administration.”
The report also calls for an amendment to the school-governance law requiring that parent-dominated Communication District Education Councils sign off on controversial policy decisions — such as the chancellor’s plans to shut down chronically failing schools, lease space to charter schools and have a say in hiring of district superintendents.
Such changes, if approved, would erode the power of the chancellor and mayor to supervise managerial personnel and make it more difficult to replace low-performing schools with new ones.
The report also recommends that parents get equal say with the principal on some school matters.
Mayor Bloomberg’s office slammed the report as a return to a failed past.
“This report, which we have been told is a draft, explicitly advocates a return to an unaccountable central policy-making board. That model failed our kids for decades, and we would not support returning to it,” said Bloomberg spokeswoman Dawn Walker.
“The report’s other recommendations would similarly take us back, not forward,” she added.
The 2002 law that abolished the Board of Education and gave Bloomberg direct authority to run the schools expires June 30. And the Smith (D-Queens) task force’s report shows there is a movement afoot to dilute mayoral control.
The task force submitted the draft proposal after holding seven public hearings.