Breaking the mayor’s monopoly: Can Zohran Mamdani make co-governance work for New York’s schools?

For more than twenty years, New York City’s mayors have fought to retain a firm hold on America’s largest public school system. Zohran Mamdani , the democratic socialist and frontrunner in the city’s mayoral race, wants to loosen that grip. If elected, Mamdani plans to overhaul a system of “mayoral control” introduced by Michael Bloomberg in 2002, an arrangement that gave the city’s executive sweeping powers over nearly one million students. He envisions a model of co-governance, one that shares authority among parents, teachers, and local councils, in what he calls a pathway to greater accountability and equity. Critics, however, see in it the makings of confusion and dysfunction. The proposal marks an extraordinary departure from precedent. Since Bloomberg persuaded the state leg