Flanagan Echoes Cuomo, Says De Blasio Must Show Improvement In City Schools To Maintain Control

This sets up an interesting fight next year when mayoral control comes up for renewal:

Flanagan also previewed what kind of changes Senate Republicans may make to mayoral control next year, when the program comes up for renewal again.

“I say this time and time again, I'm going to be guided by Senators [Andrew] Lanza, [Marty] Golden, and [Simcha] Felder in particular,” he said, referring to the three members of his conference who represent districts in New York City.

And he also reaffirmed a statement Cuomo made Tuesday about mayoral control, suggesting that if de Blasio wants continued authority over the city’s school system, he must demonstrate that the schools are doing well under his stewardship.

“I think the administration has to demonstrate what actions they are taking. What’s been the byproduct of that? Has it worked? Is it not working?” he said.

“The mayor wants control, or permanent mayoral control. He originally, when he was on the [New York City] Council, opposed mayoral control. So I’d love to have a discussion about that. What was the transactional nature of that?”

Flanagan, as usual, sticks a lie into his statements - de Blasio never opposed mayoral control of schools when Bloomberg had it, he simply was critical of the way Bloomberg ran the system.

So right off the bat, we have Flanagan setting up a political battle between de Blasio and Senate Republicans and Cuomo over mayoral control of NYC schools next year that's framed with some dishonesty.

Then we have this part about the “the administration has to demonstrate what actions they are taking. What’s been the byproduct of that? Has it worked? Is it not working?"

It will be interesting to see just how they try and quantify that.

None of this is about actually policy differences or making public education work better for students, btw.

This is simply a political battle between Cuomo and his state Senate Republican allies and de Blasio, with Cuomo and the GOP looking to humiliate de Blasio as much as possible to extract revenge for the actions he took to try and help Democrats win the state Senate outright in 2014 and warn him about any actions he might try and take in 2016.

A commenter here at Perdido Street School explain this battle a but further:

The Senate GOP conference is already sweating about the November 2016 elections, when a far different electorate is expected to show up at the polls compared to last November's off-year elections.

The one year extension is meant to send a message to deBlasio that he has to stay out of the state Senate elections or face the consequences all over again.

DeBlasio needs to be very involved and let the mayoral control chips fall where they may. The WFP should not endorse any of the traitor Dems led by Jeff Klein and NYSUT needs to hire professional political operatives to strategically target weak GOP senators for defeat.

Andrew Pallotta is a dope and has wasted tens of millions in VOTE COPE contributions. Make the money count. Bring in a pro and eliminate Flanagan's majority.

That's what this battle is about, but the consequences of that battle are going to play on the public education system in NYC.

Don't be surprised if a "Metric For Student and/or School Success" doesn't show up in the near future that allows Cuomo and state Senate Republicans an excuse to further humiliate de Blasio in the mayoral control battle, snip away at his mayoral control and make him come, hat in hand, to Albany as a supplicant.

And don't be surprised if all of that doesn't go away in 2017 if and when de Blasio is dispatched by some ed reformer ally like Hakeem Jeffries or some ed reformer herself like Eva Moskowitz.