Mamdani taps New Schools Chancellor, Reverses Course on Ending Mayoral Control

As Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Kamar Samuels as his new schools chancellor on Dec. 31, he also reversed course on one of his main K-12 campaign pledges: He no longer plans to end mayoral control of the nation’s largest school system.

Instead, he will ask Albany to extend the governance model when it comes up for renewal in June. He said he will work alongside Samuels, a veteran New York City educator, toward a version of mayoral control that will “engage parents, teachers, and students in decision-making,” Mamdani said at a press conference on the northern tip of Central Park just hours before his inauguration.

His stance on mayoral control represents a major about-face for the city’s new chief executive. But Mamdani’s views on school governance were an outlier compared with other mayoral candidates, and the idea to ditch mayoral control entirely had many skeptics, especially when paired with Mamdani’s sweeping plan to build a free child care system.

Mamdani acknowledged the challenges of the massive system he’s inheriting, with its $43 billion budget, roughly 150,000 staff, and nearly 900,000 students. While literacy rates are improving, he said, nearly 45% of the city’s students in grades 3-8 remained below grade level, according to last year’s state tests. Roughly 154,000 students are homeless. And thousands of teachers are needed to meet the mandate to shrink classes, particularly in hard-to-staff positions for special education, bilingual education, math, and science.

He said he now realizes that New Yorkers should direct their concerns to him.

“I will be asking the legislature for a continuation of mayoral control,” Mamdani said, “and I will also be committed with my incoming schools chancellor to ensure that the mayoral control we preside over is not the same one that New Yorkers see today.”

Under the current governance model, the mayor unilaterally selects the schools chancellor and appoints the majority of the Panel for Educational Policy, a board that votes on school closures, contracts, and other major changes to Education Department regulations. The panel is typically considered a rubber stamp of mayoral priorities, though Mayor Eric Adams left some vacancies on the board, resulting in recent votes that pushed back more than usual.

Mamdani pledged to incorporate community involvement in a way that will not be “ceremonial or procedural, but tangible and actionable.” He wants to restructure parent meetings for community education councils so that “working parents can actually attend them” and improve awareness of these elected parent boards that oversee school zones and advise on policy. Voter turnout for these boards has been less than 2%.

Mamdani also promised to “improve the parent coordinator role to be a meaningful organizer of parents, rather than an administrative coordinator reporting to a principal.” The responsibilities of parent coordinators, a role created in the initial deal allowing for mayoral control, vary widely from school to school. Many do a tremendous amount of organizing already, particularly when it comes to helping homeless families, but many in the role have long complained about its low wages.

Mamdani said he chose Samuels because “this moment demands a new generation of leadership” that “understands our schools” and has a “transformative vision” on how to lead them.

As superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3 stretching from the Upper West Side to part of Harlem, Samuels oversaw some controversial school mergers, combining schools with different demographics as a way to foster integration in one of the country’s most segregated school systems. He initially used that approach while superintendent of Brooklyn’s District 13, where he also spearheaded a move away from gifted and talented programs that separate kids toward schoolwide enrichment models, embracing the International Baccalaureate program. Samuels started out as a teacher and principal in the Bronx.

Mamdani made clear on Wednesday that he remains opposed to gifted programs for kindergarten students, but that he has no plans to change the process for the current application season.

Samuels’ work overseeing the Adams administration’s literacy curriculum mandate, NYC Reads, led to an increase in test scores, Mamdani pointed out. Samuels also secured more than $10 million in grants across districts 3 and 13 to advance integration efforts through admissions policies, mergers, and rezonings.

“Equity is not an abstract idea. It’s a set of choices we make together in policy,” Samuels said. “But what matters is not just what we do, it’s how we do it, by listening to educators, by respecting families, by seeing students, not just as data points, but as whole people with enormous potential.”

In recent weeks, some parent groups had been calling for Mamdani to maintain stability of the school system and keep the current chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos.

Mamdani also announced that Emmy Liss will serve as executive director for the mayor’s Office of Child Care, a position that will be critical in realizing Mamdani’s pledge to bring free child care to New Yorkers.

Liss was the chief of staff for Josh Wallack, a top aide in the de Blasio administration who oversaw the Education Department’s rollout for prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds. She has been advising the mayor-elect on child care issues.

“When I worked on the expansion of universal 3-K and pre-K, I saw firsthand what it means when city government comes together to deliver the families with the vision of universal child care,” Liss said on Wednesday. “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to come together again, to double down on the city’s investments and to design and implement a program that truly meets the needs of families and sustains our child care providers and educators.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.