As various local interest groups and lawmakers push for eliminating or scaling back mayoral control of the New York City schools, Governor Spitzer's office is considering exporting it to other state school systems.
A proposal by Mr. Spitzer to grant three upstate mayors more authority over their school boards failed to pass the Legislature last year, but the governor's top education aide, Manuel Rivera, said the issue could be revived next year.
There may be no legislation on the table this year, but that "doesn't mean that this could not emerge as an important governance issue and legislative matter next year," Mr. Rivera said yesterday.
He said the administration would act only if communities show interest in moving to mayoral control, citing evidence from other cities that mayoral control works best when it enjoys broad support.
One upstate mayor, Gerald Jennings of Albany, said gaining more control of school systems is a popular subject among New York mayors. "There's a lot of mayoral discussion about it," Mr. Jennings said. "A lot of us are frustrated, because we're losing our kids."
Mr. Jennings, a former teacher and administrator, said Albany's schools need drastic change and leadership that school boards cannot deliver.
Mayors already control two of New York's big city school districts, New York City and Yonkers. The three others in the so-called Big 5 that are upstate — Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo — are run by elected school boards with no input from the mayors.
Mr. Rivera said the administration will watch the cities for signs of interest next year.
Mayoral control of schools, which has been introduced in cities stretching across about 40 states, can take on different forms. Eliminating a city's school board and allowing a superintendent or chancellor to run the schools is the New York City model. Mr. Spitzer's proposal last year followed Yonkers's model — preserving the school board but letting the mayor appoint some of its members.
Representatives of school boards and superintendents lined up against the proposal last year, and several groups said they would likely oppose governance changes in the future, too.
Representatives of the groups said that adding mayoral appointees to school boards would hurt democracy, as the school boards are now directly elected by the public. They also said there is no evidence it would improve education.
"We do not want to see it expanded beyond where it already is," the director of communications and research at the New York State School Boards Association, David Albert, said. "There really is no strong research out there to suggest that mayoral control improves student achievement."
The deputy director at the Conference of Big 5 School Districts, Jennifer Pyle, said the issue is a nonstarter upstate because none of the three mayors there have indicated they want to take more control. While in the past, superintendents, school boards, and mayors have clashed on education, she said the climate in the three upstate big cities is now cooperative.
"The relationships are working well as they are now," Ms. Pyle said. "We just don't see any need for it at this time."
The state Legislature granted Mayor Bloomberg control of New York City's schools shortly after he was elected to office in 2002. The law is set to sunset in July 2009, and though the city's business community is a strong supporter of maintaining it, many lawmakers and interest groups have been concocting plans to weaken the mayor's power.
Mr. Albert and Ms. Pyle each said their opposition to mayoral control upstate should not be taken as a criticism of New York City's governance structure. They said the system in New York City is an exception because school board members were designated by appointment, not direct election.
