New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said Thursday he has “no interest” in heading the nation’s largest school district if Albany lawmakers let Mayor Adams’ control of the school system expire this summer.
Banks, who has been schools chancellor for two years, told reporters he accepted the gig because of his alignment with Adams. He said proposals to give a citywide education policy panel more power and independence from Adams and his City Hall staff would not be good for the school system.
“I have no interest in serving as a chancellor in a system where you don’t really have the authority to make real decisions,” Banks said at Department of Education headquarters in lower Manhattan. “I have no interest in that whatsoever. I want to be very, very clear about that.”
The United Federation of Teachers and education advocates are pushing for checks and balances on the mayor’s power to dictate school programs and procedures.
Currently, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy is mostly appointed by Mayor Adams and pushes through City Hall directives on contracts, school mergers and closures, and other issues when all his members are present.
“If you don’t have the majority of the votes, you don’t have the power,” the chancellor said. “Because that means now you have to negotiate for every vote that you’re trying to do. You’re trying to do the right thing for kids — but every single vote now has to be negotiated.”
“That’s politics. I do not think that that would be good for the school system. I certainly did not sign up for that.”
Banks touted the administration’s education reforms, including a literacy curriculum overhaul and new career programs, saying the old system was plagued by corruption. As other districts remove library books and weakened the teaching of Black history, he told reporters, city schools have doubled down on diversifying school materials.
Still, the state Senate and Assembly this week indicated little appetite for renewing mayoral control during budget negotiations. When it was last extended two years ago, lawmakers asked for a study of the policy, due within a few weeks, that could inform their decision-making.
Gov. Hochul had initially proposed a four-year extension of mayoral control in January.
State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), chair of the Senate’s New York City Education Committee, said in a statement that his decision on tie issue will be “based on experience from over 20 years of mayoral control, through three mayors and several chancellors and is not a verdict on the current administration.”
“In any event, David Banks has been an extraordinary schools chancellor and though I hope he wouldn’t quit, I’ll remind him as I have others that the cemeteries are full of indispensable men,” Liu said.
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Kendall Rodriguez/for New York Daily News State Sen. John Liu
At the city Department of Education’s request, researchers spoke with Banks and others who have served as schools chancellor, as well as school system staff for technical clarification on the issue, according to state education officials.
The researchers will not offer recommendations, but will include the history of mayoral control, school governance models outside the city, and a summary of public comment in a public report to state lawmakers.
Frustrated teachers and parents at a series of hearings this winter in each borough questioned mayoral control’s effectiveness and demanded a more representative structure. The State Education Department sent personal invitations to 2,300 schools, officials and organizations to the hearings, it said.
Adams, in remarks obtained by the Daily News, defended the negative reviews as the opinions of a small number of “professional” parents.
“Parent engagement must be real parent engagement,” Adams said at last weekend’s SOMOS conference in Albany, “and not just a selected group of people who have presented themselves speaking on behalf of the masses.
“Even when we did the hearings, five hearings, a million students, we only had 100 people at each hearing on the average being able to speak,” Adams said. “So we have to really be honest, when we talk about parent engagement, it can’t be just the professional parents. It has to be all the parents.”
Mayoral control, if not extended, would expire at the end of June.
With Tim Balk
