In most school districts across the country, the education system is overseen by a publicly elected school board, but a number of city school districts have taken a different administrative approach: “mayoral control.” Mayoral control shifts the balance of accountability and authority for everything from academic performance of schools and student outcomes to the fiscal and operational efficiency of the educational system directly to the chief executive of the city.
As a policy, mayoral control can take numerous forms, including allowing the mayor to appoint all or a majority the members of an overseeing agency’s governing body, nominating individuals for such positions while leaving formal appointment to the city’s legislative body, directly appointing a school’s superintendent, designating only certain schools for mayoral control instead of the entire district, and more. In one form or another, mayoral control has been implemented in cities across a great diversity of sizes, student populations, and educational histories. Among them: Philadelphia and Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Oakland, and, of course, New York City—the largest and one of the most diverse school districts in the nation.
In April 2024, after months of research, investigation, and a series of public hearings, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) published a comprehensive report on the state of mayoral control of New York City schools. The report was designed to inform the state legislature as it deliberated on whether to extend mayoral control over the city’s school district, and, if so, how long. Although the report did not endorse a particular position, its findings highlighted several benefits of mayoral control, outlined possible improvements, and offered thoughts on its impact on equity, efficacy, and educational outcomes for students in the city.
Shortly following the report’s release, the state legislature reauthorized mayoral control of New York City schools for another two years. While the final legislation extended the mayor’s authority, it also required reforms to school governance that would provide the mayor with less control over the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, the governing body of the New York City Department of Education whose 24 members are appointed by the mayor and borough presidents, and outlined concrete steps that needed to be taken to adhere to the recent law dictating maximum class sizes in public schools.
In 2026, more than 20 years after mayoral control was first implemented in New York City, state leaders will be reconsidering—for the fifth time—its continuation and evaluating its merits, challenges, and policy implications. In light of this deliberation, below we provide a summary of the history of mayoral control policies and proposals in New York City and elsewhere in New York, and discuss how and where mayoral control could be considered to include a number of other city school districts across the state.
New York City and Yonkers
Mayoral control is just one aspect of a larger movement in education reform focused on school governance and accountability that has swept school systems across the United States during the past 25 years. That movement included the introduction of state-level school choice measures and charter schools, the bipartisan federal No Child Left Behind Act (later reformed and reauthorized as the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act), the establishment of state test-driven accountability standards for school performance, and state takeovers of poorly performing public schools.
New York has had a history of calls to change school governance. Over the years, several of New York’s large cities, including Buffalo, Rochester, and Yonkers, have sought a change in governance to allow greater mayoral control and accountability of their school systems to overcome achievement gaps among different demographic groups, to remedy fiscal mismanagement, and to direct additional support interventions to lower-performing schools. Policies were enacted at the state level, too, authorizing the state to assign governance of “persistently failing schools” to the care of a receivership program focused on academic improvement. Across these various reform efforts, only in New York City and Yonkers was some form of mayoral control created and put in place.
As documented in NYSED’s report, in 2002, New York State legislators first reached a compromise that granted mayoral control over New York City public schools with the stated intention to “overcome decades of perceived achievement gaps and systematic inefficiency by uniting under local administration control and markers of progress for students.” Since then, the state legislature has reauthorized this initiative eight separate times and for differing durations, ranging from six years (2009) to just two years (2017, 2019, 2022, and 2024).
While there are certainly several other contributing factors, in the past two years of mayoral control, New York City has posted the highest student achievement scores on state proficiency exams of any of the state’s largest cities (see Table 1).
Table 1. Average Proficiency Rates, 2022-23 and 2023-24, “Big Five” School Districts
| 2022 | 2023 | ||||
| 3-8 ELA | 3-8 Math | 3-8 ELA | 3-8 Math | ||
|
Mayoral Control District |
|||||
| New York City | 53% | 54% | 51% | 57% | |
| Yonkers | 41% | 38% | 39% | 43% | |
|
Traditional School District |
|||||
| Buffalo | 27% | 23% | 25% | 25% | |
| Syracuse | 20% | 16% | 20% | 18% | |
| Rochester | 14% | 16% | 15% | 14% | |
| New York State Average | 48% | 52% | 46% | 54% | |
SOURCE: New York State Education Department
As shown in Table 2, average proficiency rates in New York City schools have improved during the most recent period of mayoral control, from being below the statewide average to outperforming the statewide average on math; proficiency scores in the other largest districts across the state have remained stagnant or declined over time. New York City schools’ English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency rates, likewise, exceeded state averages during this time as well as the rates of the other largest districts, though its own declined slightly.
Table 2. Average ELA & Math Proficiency Scores for “Big Five” School Districts during NYC Mayoral Control, 2001-02, 2011-12, and 2021-22
| 2001-02 | 2011-12 | 2021-22 | ||||
| 4 & 8 ELA | 4 & 8 Math | 3-8 ELA | 3-8 Math | 3-8 ELA | 3-8 Math | |
| New York City | 39.3% | 37.3% | 46.9% | 60.0% | 50.0% | 42.0% |
| Yonkers | 49.7% | 50.1% | 40.7% | 46.8% | 39.0% | 39.0% |
| Buffalo | 29.0% | 38.6% | 27.9% | 29.9% | 24.0% | 16.0% |
| Syracuse | 30.7% | 38.3% | 24.2% | 26.9% | 17.0% | 11.0% |
| Rochester | 40.1% | 39.1% | 20.7% | 27.3% | 13.0% | 6.4% |
| New York State | 54.4% | 59.5% | 55.1% | 64.8% | 47.0% | 41.0% |
Note: In SY 2001-2002, NYS proficiency tests were administered only in the 4th and 8th grades. Figures presented here are the weighted average proficiency scores for those two years.
Source: New York State Education Department: New York State Assessment Reports 2001-02, 2011-12, and 2021-22.
The City of Yonkers has also had a variant of mayoral control in place since just prior to the 1990s. There, the mayor is empowered to appoint all nine members of the local school board and a superintendent, who manages all operations and oversees all the academic functions of the city schools. When the mayor and appointed school superintendent gained oversight of the district’s financial and administrative matters, key changes began to occur, including the closure of several middle schools in favor of creating combined K-8 schools and the creation of magnet schools. An initial assessment of student achievement was included in a 2013 Center for American Progress analysis that showed that from 1999 to 2009, the Yonkers school district saw persistent gains in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores. At the fourth-grade level, the percentage of students who scored proficient or above in reading improved from 31 percent to 68 percent; in math, it improved from 40 percent to 80 percent. At the eighth-grade level, the percentage of students who scored proficient or above during the 1999–2009 period increased from 25 percent to 51 percent in English Language Arts and from 11 percent to 54 percent in math. While individual metrics of student performance steadily improved during this time, the school district as a whole remained lower than the statewide average.
In 2014, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano sought further oversight as a route to overcoming financial uncertainty in school budgets that were leading to funding gaps in certain schools in the district. The legislation would have amended existing law to allow the mayor’s office direct handling of district budgets to avert any future budgetary shortfalls and to establish a city-level Department of Education, similar to the style that exists in New York City. Although the proposal received some support in the state Senate, it failed to pass in the Assembly. Instead, legislators opted to simply allocate additional targeted funding while continuing to allow city leaders to oversee the administrative matters of the school district.
In 2016, as part of efforts to reorganize the district with mayoral control, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano and Superintendent Quezada launched the “Rebuild Yonkers Schools” campaign to address aging infrastructure and overcrowding in the city’s public schools and to help close a nearly $45 million budget gap.
By 2019, an evaluation showed that overall district graduation rates had improved from 63 percent in 2011 to 88 percent across the district, a rate that eventually led to Yonkers being recognized as achieving the most significant gains in test scores across the state during that time.
During the same period that New York City and Yonkers granted their mayors control over city schools, a slate of cities across the nation—including Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, and Cleveland—all shifted their education governance structures to give more control to mayors in the hope that such changes would instill greater direct accountability for outcomes and ultimately lead to improved school quality and student achievement. Some of these cities abandoned the new approach when academic performance did not increase as expected, while others persisted with the approach. In 2007, mayoral control ended for Los Angeles after a declaration that it violated the state constitution, and Detroit’s version of mayoral control ended in 2004 after only five years by a voter referendum, after the envisioned improvement did not occur. Most recently, Illinois passed a law in 2021 to gradually shift Chicago back from mayoral control to an elected school board by the year 2027, operating under new districts drawn for “better representation over district education.” At the same time, several US cities, such as Philadelphia and Boston, have continued the use of mayoral control for their school districts. In these cases, the cities’ mayors appoint a majority of the city school boards.
Calls to Expand Mayoral Control in New York State
Beyond New York City and Yonkers, local leaders elsewhere in New York, most prominently Rochester and Buffalo, have pushed for changes to governance over their city schools.
Rochester
In 2009, the mayor of Rochester, Robert Duffy, called on the state legislature to grant the city’s mayor authority to oversee the Rochester City School District (RCSD). The primary reason offered in favor of the change was that the district, governed by an elected school board, had been unable to overcome substantial challenges in effectively managing the district’s academic performance and financial stability. As Duffy stated in 2010, “There is no way that the city government and the school district can maintain the status quo and succeed as separate organizations…I want to save the next generation of our children…I welcome the buck stopping with me.” This sentiment was later reinforced by the outcome of a 2018 independent consulting report commissioned by the state education commissioner that found that RCSD was in “dire need of improvement” in outcomes for students. The report recommended wholesale changes in the governance and operations of RCSD to address the low graduation rates, high dropout rates, and fiscal deficits the district had produced for years. In response, Assemblymember David Gantt introduced legislation to implement mayoral control over RCSD, asserting that the system in place at the time was “failing students.” These bills received a wide range of support, including from former Governor Andrew Cuomo and a number of other state legislators who signaled a willingness to expand mayoral control as an alternative to the existing city school board governance structure. Assemblymember Gantt’s proposed legislation, as well as other similar bills, each ultimately failed to pass in the state legislature, however.
Buffalo
The city of Buffalo, too, has considered the option of mayoral control as a shift in governance of the Buffalo Public Schools (BPS). In 2013, Mayor Byron Brown and other local leaders started to push for a central role in decision-making for the district. A bill was introduced in the state legislature in 2015 by Assemblymember Crystal People-Stokes to give the mayor control to appoint the entire nine-member school commission and the superintendent’s position for two years, a design informed by the original 2002 New York City mayoral control structure. Under People-Stokes’s proposal, after the end of the initial two-year period, the state legislature would have to either renew mayoral authority, enact another plan, or revert to the old system. The bill, Assembly Bill A7680, would have also established a community school advisory council and required the superintendent and staff to present quarterly reports to the legislature, the governor’s office, the Buffalo Board of Education, and the state Education Department. The proposal was not without its critics, however, specifically the Buffalo Teachers Federation, which asserted there were potential constitutional and legal challenges to its implementation based on provisions of the New York State Constitution and Municipal Home Rule Law. Other opposition came from parents within the district, citing concerns that distributing power to a single individual or administration was antidemocratic and added unnecessary bureaucracy to resolve a local problem. Fractured local support for the proposal in the state legislature very likely contributed to the death of the bill in 2016.
Praise for and Objections to Mayoral Control in New York State
The recent NYSED report found that arguments in favor of mayoral control have tended to fall into three categories:
- First, proponents argue that integrating political accountability and centralizing authority over an educational standardization performance system under a mayor can lead to more efficient decision-making. A 2017 study by scholars J. Celeste Lay and Michael D. Tyburski, for example, showcased that in cities with mayoral control, voters tend to attribute the success or failures of students to the leadership of a mayor’s administration. Another study published in March 2025 by the Institute for Educational & Social Equity, a qualitative analysis of one urban school district, found that a mayor can play a critical role in achieving tangible signs of progress for the school district through connections to community stakeholders.
- Second, supporters assert that because mayors have greater latitude to allocate resources to areas of need than does the decentralized leadership of a school board, this is likely to result in better responsiveness to local needs. This aligns with the findings of a 2007 comprehensive study of mayoral-city school districts that found that this structure could be more effective in focusing on singular school improvement initiatives that affect the overall academic performance of their districts.
- Third, mayoral governance districts tend to academically outperform or minimize achievement gaps to a greater degree than do similar districts overseen by a school board. According to the 2013 study by the Center for American Progress referenced above, for example, there was a significant positive relationship between a school in a mayoral-controlled district and student achievement growth in both math and reading proficiency scores in New York City and Yonkers. The report specifically notes: “The school-level analysis… suggests that between 1999 and 2010 the benefits of mayoral control have been strongest in the state of New York—where both New York City and Yonkers have mayoral-appointed school boards. In the state of New York, there is a significant positive relationship between a school in a mayoral-controlled district and student achievement growth in both eighth-grade math and reading, and in fourth-grade math. New York City’s National Assessment of Educational Progress performance since 2003 mirrors these trends…”
Opponents, however, contend that the concentration of management of public schools under a mayor could undermine free and frequent democratic participation from families and stem other local input for consequential determination.
- Some fear that mayoral control arrangements hold the potential for the prioritization of political agendas over educational needs. For example, the NYSED report noted that during public hearings, families repeatedly stated that they believed mayoral control sidelined teachers, parents, and other community stakeholders—people who are most directly affected by decisions—from a role in educational decisions.
- The NYSED report also cited studies that indicate how student achievement in the mayoral-control school district tends to have a low impact on voting preferences for local residents, with economic and other social issues being at the forefront of priorities for voters. This research may raise questions about the importance to families of direct accountability for educational performance.
- Other studies show that despite some marginal improvements in educational outcomes for some school districts, the policies of mayoral control do not always result in wholesale improvements for district-wide academic outcomes and efficiencies, as is often promised. Here, a lack of consensus on effectiveness has spurred several large cities throughout the country to amend their mayoral control policies or revert to school board governance. Such examples include Chicago and Detroit, cities that cited “mismanagement” and “imbalanced, negligible outcomes for students” as rationale for immediate reversals.
Other analyses have concurred that mayoral control has varying takeover effects. According to a 2024 report from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), for example, cities that had a governance structure of mayoral control were not “significantly different” in terms of performance from other large districts without it.
Mayoral Control Elsewhere in New York State?
Renewal of mayoral control for New York City schools will be argued, questioned, and decided over the course of the next year. As seen in previous scholarly research and as highlighted in NYSED’s comprehensive report, while certainly not a guarantee, there are potential benefits or improvements that city school districts might achieve under a system of mayoral control.
Because mayoral control policies, practices, and structures are flexible and can be designed to meet local needs, it seems practical to consider if New York could or should allow certain city school districts in the state to elect to implement this change in governance—and if so, where. Outside of New York City and Yonkers, the other three cities that make up the “Big 5”—Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse—all have citywide school districts, and could be granted the authority to implement mayoral control if those cities wished to do so. Additionally, there are 15 other cities in New York State whose school districts share the same boundary as their city, making them candidates for the option of mayoral control:
New York State Cities with Coterminous School District Boundaries
| Albany | North Tonawanda | Poughkeepsie |
| Cohoes | New Rochelle | Rensselaer |
| Glen Cove | Niagara Falls | Tonawanda |
| Lackawanna | Peekskill | Utica |
| Mount Vernon | Plattsburgh | White Plains |
Source: Office of the State Comptroller, School District Component Tax Table, 2024.
Each of these city school districts certainly is unique in terms of student demographic composition, local wealth, and school district tax and spending rates, teacher labor market conditions, and more—all factors that can impact both educational inputs and outcomes. While mayoral control by itself may not be a determinant of student success, research and experience have shown that it is possible that the forms of accountability that come with mayoral control could be one of the drivers of that success. New York City and Yonkers, both of which have mayoral control, post student proficiency scores higher than the other Big 5 school districts (Table 1). New York City exceeds the state average, and while Yonkers is slightly below the state average, the other Big 5 cities have student proficiency rates much further below the state average. With only one exception (New Rochelle’s combined grades 3–8 proficiency score in math), all 15 cities with coterminous school districts scored below the state average in both ELA and math for grades 3–8 (Table 3).
Table 3. Average Proficiency Rates, 2022-23 and 2023-24, Other New York State Cities with Coterminous School Districts
| 2022 Students Scoring Proficient | 2023 Students Scoring Proficient | |||
| 3-8 ELA | 3-8 Math | 3-8 ELA | 3-8 Math | |
| Albany | 28% | 29% | 32% | 34% |
| Cohoes | 37% | 37% | 34% | 36% |
| Glen Cove | 32% | 41% | 34% | 43% |
| Lackawanna | 18% | 20% | 16% | 20% |
| Mount Vernon | 42% | 39% | 42% | 40% |
| North Tonawanda | 36% | 50% | 27% | 41% |
| New Rochelle | 49% | 57% | 46% | 57% |
| Niagara Falls | 23% | 16% | 25% | 26% |
| Peekskill | 26% | 38% | 24% | 31% |
| Plattsburgh | 35% | 35% | 31% | 31% |
| Poughkeepsie | 27% | 19% | 23% | 24% |
| Rensselaer | 26% | 20% | 23% | 29% |
| Tonawanda | 38% | 45% | 41% | 50% |
| Utica | 35% | 38% | 31% | 38% |
| White Plains | 43% | 50% | 42% | 48% |
| New York State Average | 48% | 52% | 46% | 54% |
Source: New York State Education Department.
Policy Consideration: Authorizing Localities with the Option for Mayoral Control
New York State policymakers could consider expanding the opportunity for mayoral control to all those city school districts that share their school district’s boundaries, giving residents the ability to choose whether to switch their form of school governance. Any enabling state legislation that authorizes a city’s residents to vote to transition to mayoral control of their school districts could also include various guardrails—NYSED’s report highlights the need for required public input and evaluation of outcomes as important components in successful implementation of mayoral control, for example.
New York’s Municipal Home Rule law allows municipalities to petition the state legislature for changes in state law that are needed to enact policies or programs related to their “property, affairs, or government,” often through the submission of a formal “home rule form” or request to the state Senate or Assembly (or both). While any of the noted cities could choose to pursue mayoral control individually and through this route, the state also could preemptively craft, pass, and enact legislation that grants these cities the authorization to hold public referenda whenever they wish to decide whether to establish mayoral control of their city school districts.
That kind of expansion of authority for local decision-making on mayoral control could be structured as follows:
- Legislation could allow voters in any city that shares boundaries with its school district to place resolutions for mayoral control on local ballots in the same way other ballot initiatives are currently determined.
- Public hearings and public comment periods could be a prerequisite for placing the mayoral control proposition on the ballot, and a super-majority vote in favor of the proposition could be required. The legislation also could require routine public hearings and presentations of policy changes during the course of that control, if approved.
- Each period of mayoral control could be limited to no more than five (or fewer) years, and reauthorization by voters could be required. This time limit would ensure that a city has regular opportunities to renew, revise, or repeal the new governance structure.
- A review of student academic outcomes and the fiscal condition of the school district could be required to be made public to city voters periodically, and a comprehensive analysis of current and past performance could be required to be included in a public report prior to any proposed renewal, revision, or repeal of the governance structure beyond current state and federal performance and fiscal reporting requirements.
Cities across the country have implemented mayoral control of their school districts. Here in New York, mayoral control in New York City and Yonkers has been repeatedly extended, signaling legislative support for this approach—at least in certain cases. Other New York cities, including Buffalo and Rochester, have at times requested the authority to implement a similar governance structure for their schools. Given that context, it’s worth considering policies that would allow residents of the 15 cities across New York State that share a boundary with their school district to determine if mayoral control over their schools is right for them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Maxwell Herrera is a policy analyst at the Rockefeller Institute of Government