Mayoral control of the New York City public school system is scheduled to sunset in June 2009. Politicians, parents, teachers, administrators and others are debating whether to renew the law, let it expire or make changes to appease critics of the current system for controlling the city’s schools.  This investigation is our contribution to this ongoing debate.

In 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg accomplished what those before him could not: he convinced the New York Legislature to transfer control of New York City’s vast school system from 32 local school boards to the mayor’s office. This shift undid more than 30 years of decentralization that was intended to give power over schools to local communities. But, according to the mayor and his supporters, the 32 local boards, along with the city’s central Board of Education, allowed huge disparities and left thousands of children without basic skills.

In testimony before the City Council’s Education Committee, Bloomberg said the decentralized system, run by the central, seven-member Board of Education, had its chance and was “broken.” He called for the legislature to abolish the board and have the chancellor report directly to the mayor, ”the way all current commissioners charged with delivering services to the public do.”

”If democracy can be trusted to provide us with public safety, social services and economic development, how can we responsibly condemn our children to something less?” Bloomberg said during that same testimony. In short, the mayor promised to provide more accountability and to transform a system that, in his opinion, had allowed generations of students to leave school without the skills and knowledge they needed to succeed.

After winning control, Bloomberg abolished the city’s Board of Education and replaced it with the Panel for Educational Policy. Because of legislation advocated by Bloomberg, the educational panel has far fewer powers than the Board of Education that it replaced. Each borough president appoints one member to the 13-member panel and the mayor appoints the other eight.

To further centralize control, Bloomberg created the Department of Education, which is headquartered inside the Tweed Courthouse, in the backyard of City Hall. He replaced the local school districts with 10 larger instructional zones headed by regional superintendents, accountable to the mayor and the chancellor and replaced the 32 local boards with parent councils.

Bloomberg appointed Joel I. Klein, who was the chairman and chief executive of Bertelsmann Inc. and a former assistant attorney general under President Bill Clinton, as the first chancellor of the reconfigured New York public school system. This proved to be a contentious choice among educators because Klein had virtually no experience in education.

Originally, many saw the mayor’s changes as a solution to the political infighting and fractured bureaucracy associated with the local school boards. But, various consolidation initiatives over the past few years, a lack of transparency, and an increasing number of no-bid contracts awarded by the Department of Education have received criticism even from some who initially supported the change.