NYC schools can get even worse — unless Kathy Hochul steps up

Ask parents of school-aged children who have fled New York City why they did, and chances are they’ll point first to housing costs — then to poor public schools.

So far, the mayoral race has focused heavily on the former while neglecting the latter.

That’s a big problem: Every New Yorker — not just parents — has a stake in ensuring their tax dollars give the city’s kids a strong foundation, and give families a reason to stay put.

Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has said practically nothing about how he would run the city’s massive $41.2 billion Department of Education.

What he has said suggests that he’d put the interests of its teachers’ union — which endorsed him last month — above those of parents.

Start with charter schools, whose teachers are almost all non-unionized. 

Mamdani opposes expanding charters, even as 60% of city parents want more of them.

Families are increasingly choosing charters over traditional public schools because charter-school students score far better in reading and math than their DOE counterparts — at less than half the per-pupil spending.

But Mamdani plans to audit charter schools that operate in the same buildings as DOE schools, potentially looking for excuses to restrict them.

Worse, the Democratic Socialist wants to dismantle centralized mayoral control over the city’s public schools — one of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s signature achievements.

Mamdani could return NYC to the bad old days when schools were governed by a dysfunctional patchwork of 32 school districts outside of the mayor’s oversight.

The results were disastrous: Schools were run more for the benefit of teachers and corrupt district officials than for students, who suffered the consequences.

But it’s just what the United Federation of Teachers wants — the union can easily dominate low-turnout district board elections while avoiding the responsibility to deliver better outcomes, a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Mamdani has backed away from his previous support for abolishing the city’s specialized high-school exam, but once in office there’s no telling what he’d do to weaken gifted and talented education in the name of equity.

A campaign spokesperson said that kids can’t learn “downstream from poverty.” Tell that to the 80% of charter students and 55% of specialized high school students who are low-income.

In sum, Mamdani wants to wash his hands of the responsibility to educate New York’s kids while cutting off their escape routes to charter schools.

It’s a recipe for intergenerational poverty — all to preserve UFT jobs.

If city and state leaders were serious about ensuring a quality education for every child, they would seek to boost DOE school performance while offering parents private, parochial and charter options.

Gov. Kathy Hochul can give families more of these choices at no cost to the city or state — but only if she resists teacher-union pressure.

President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains a generous dollar-for-dollar tax credit up to $1,700 for donations to K-12 scholarship organizations.

These nonprofits provide scholarships students can use to enroll in private or religious schools.

Students with a family income below 300% of the area’s median gross income — in the five boroughs, that’s a $309,000 cutoff — will be eligible.

It’s the first federal school-choice program, a game-changer for kids nationwide, and it takes nothing from local education budgets.

But each state must opt in to the program — and the teachers’ unions, desperate to avoid competition, would rather Hochul decline this free federal cash that can’t be spent on schools they control.

Republican states, meanwhile, will gleefully accept billions in tuition assistance because their leaders aren’t beholden to unions.

If Hochul opts in, she’ll give city families more high-quality education options — and more reason to stay in NYC.

The next mayor would have zero say in the matter.

Meanwhile, whoever becomes New York City’s next mayor should fight not only to preserve mayoral control of public schools, but to justify it by improving results.

The best way to start is to attack the city’s 35% rate of chronic absenteeism and make sure that more students go to class every day.

He should also support charter schools, such as by expanding their presence in underutilized DOE buildings.

Hochul has an easy opportunity to help families by accepting the new federal tax-credit program. 

And state lawmakers should lift the cap on charter schools — giving kids more options, and pushing DOE schools to compete and improve.

“In order to fix our schools, we first also have to fix our city,” Mamdani has said.

He’s got it exactly backwards: To fix our city, we must fix our schools.

Danyela Egorov is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where John Ketcham is the director of cities and a legal policy fellow. All views expressed are those of the authors and not the Manhattan Institute.