We’ve published a guide to the uncharted territory of a post-mayoral control world. Here’s a summary:

1. The borough presidents and the mayor convene a new city Board of Education.
2. The Board of Education members elect a president among themselves and begin receiving salaries.
3. The Board of Education selects a chancellor.
4. The Board figures out how to make money flow.
5. Community school boards form.
6. District superintendents are appointed.

Please note this all ideally occurs before the start of summer school tomorrow morning.

The mayor’s full statement:

“I said this afternoon that today, June 30, 2009, would be a day that will tell us an awful lot about our State Senate.  Sadly, that has turned out to be entirely true.  Like millions of New Yorkers, I had hoped that when push came to shove, our Senators would muster the courage to rise above partisan gridlock and do what’s right on school governance, our sales tax, and so many other issues. Unfortunately, they did not.  The fact is, there is broad, bi-partisan support for the school governance bill, but it’s being held hostage to partisan politics. All we want is all 62 Senators to come together and take a vote.  Because the Senate refused to act like a responsible body today, come tomorrow, sadly, the lawyers take over in New York City schools.  Every decision – from personnel decisions to policy decisions – will be subject to litigation and uncertainty.  But make no mistake about it, we will not allow Albany dysfunction to padlock our school buildings or cancel the summer school sessions our kids need to get ahead.

“The Senate’s failure to act today also cost us at least $60 million in lost revenue.  That’s what it costs the NYPD to support 600 police officers for a month, or what our Department for the Aging spends to keep all 305 Senior Centers open for eight months. The $60 million the State Senate cost us today could potentially mean layoffs that would hurt families when they can least afford it, and will certainly mean cuts to services that every New Yorker needs.”

For over a year, a coalition of Muslim New Yorkers has lobbied the Department of Education to change its policy. The mayor has said he does not favor including the two holidays because it would shorten the school year and could lead other religious groups to demand that their holidays be included as well.

Amy Sugimori, a spokeswoman for the coalition, said the group would continue to lobby the mayor “to come up with a solution that works for everybody,” she said, adding that she didn’t expect the policy to change in the upcoming school year.

Councilman Robert Jackson, who chairs the Education Committee, is Muslim and supports the change in policy.

“Having to choose whether to send your children to school on your highest, holiest holidays where there may be an exam or stuff like that, it’s a clash situation and it should not have to happen,” Jackson told Politicker.

He said the mayor was “not being open-minded, he’s not being flexible, he’s not being inclusive.”

The two holidays are Eid al-Fitr, which celebrates the end of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha, which is considered the most important Muslim holiday.

Currently, students who miss school in observance of the two holidays are marked as having an excused absence. Roughly 10 percent of the city’s schoolchildren are Muslim, according to a 2008 study conducted by Columbia University’s Teachers College.

The resolution, which is non-binding, does not compel the DOE to change the policy.

Control of Tweed Courthouse, the Department of Education's headquarters, is in question as mayoral control expires.

In the past week, we have interviewed dozens of people and undertaken headache-inducing reviews of state education law.

That reporting informs the following guide to what will happen if — or, as seems increasingly likely, when — the 2002 mayoral control law expires tonight at midnight:

1. The borough presidents and the mayor would convene a new city Board of Education. The current law says that, starting June 30, 2009 (which technically is today),

The board of education of the city school district of the city of New York is hereby continued. Such board of education shall consist of seven members, a member to be appointed by each borough president of the city of New York and two by the mayor.

One borough president has already appointed his member; others say their appointments are on the way. But it’s not entirely clear that Mayor Bloomberg will go along with creating a new Board of Education. If he does, he will appoint two members, too. If not, the governance structure of the city school could land in court.

2. The Board of Education members would elect a president among themselves and begin receiving salaries. State law requires that the president of the board be paid $20,000 a year and other members receive $15,000.

3. The Board of Education would select a chancellor. Chancellor Joel Klein’s contract, which is simply a letter from Mayor Bloomberg dated November 2002, would expire with mayoral control. Under the pre-2002 law,

The office of chancellor of the city district is hereby continued. It shall be filled by a person employed by the city board by contract for a term not to exceed by more than one year the term of office of the city board authorizing such contract, subject to removal for cause. The chancellor shall receive a salary to be fixed by the city board within the budgetary allocation therefor.

All but one borough president has suggested he or she would recommend keeping Klein, so it’s fair to assume that Klein would remain chancellor, should he accept the offer. He’d just have a new contract (and maybe a new salary).

4. The Board would figure out how to make money flow. Now and under the pre-2002 law, the Board of Education has final say over the city school system’s purse strings. But the simple act of letting mayoral control expire would alter the school budget, and so a reconstituted Board of Education could end up having to approve a new budget for next year.

The board could also decide that it wanted to re-approve — or revise — the current school budget. It would also have to make sure to approve (or vote down) any looming contracts.

Bloomberg administration officials argue that a system vaulted back to the pre-2002 law would cost more money to operate. They estimate the costs of running the community school districts as they used to function is $340 million. Some of that is currently covered in superintendent salaries, which constitute about $5 million of the city budget right now, not including benefits. But other parts are not.

The $110,000 in salaries for Board of Education members would also be an added cost; members of the current Board of Education, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, do not receive salaries.

Other sources said that costs would be minimal. They said there’s no reason the community superintendents could not continue to exist on their current budgets. The 2002 law did not get rid of the community school districts, and it listed much of the same responsibilities for superintendents as had existed before 2002. (In practice, the Bloomberg administration assigned superintendents other roles.)

5. Community school boards would form. According to the old law, elections for school board members cannot be held until May of 2010. There are several ways to jump-start community school boards sooner. In one scenario, the chancellor would appoint interim members, known as trustees, to take the place of the 32 school boards that existed up until 2003. This was routinely done before mayoral control when school boards had vacant seats or were deemed dysfunctional.

Department of Education officials interpret the law differently. In a memo outlining what will happen if mayoral control expires, officials said that the chancellor cannot name trustees unless a board member has violated a law. A school official also pointed out that the concept of trustees seems to be absent from the state education law.

Another scenario would have the DOE go to court to get a ruling permitting the Community Education Councils to function as the school boards once did.

The school boards become even thornier if elections are held. In an e-mail to a parent today, obtained by GothamSchools, the executive director of the city’s Board of Elections, Marcus Cederqvist, said that the Department of Justice might have to give a “pre-clearance” before elections could occur. DOJ requires pre-clearances for changes in election procedures.

6. District superintendents would be appointed. The city currently has 32 community superintendents, but under the pre-2002 law, the superintendents would have to hold a contract with the community school boards.

The Department of Education has argued that the impossibility of convening school boards would make community superintendents unlawful. But others familiar with the pre-2002 situation said that superintendents could easily be re-appointed.

They said this could happen in one of two ways. Either the community school boards would select superintendents — likely the ones already in place — or the chancellor could go over the head of the boards and appoint superintendents himself.

These superintendents would have hiring and firing power and would oversee the opening of summer school tomorrow.

Only a handful of New Yorkers showed up to an afternoon-long party planned to celebrate the end of mayoral control.

The seven people who gathered outside Tweed Courthouse at 4:30 p.m. today were outnumbered by members of the press, but their display was spirited. “Take a hike, Mike, and don’t you come back no more,” they sang, drawing some participation from passersby. As the winds whipped across Chambers Street, DeMarco yelled, “The winds of change are blowing!”

Most of the celebrants were teachers who are facing termination. They carried a sign that said “Educators’ Rights = Human Rights” and one, Anna-Maria Thomas, said the group was planning to “give Joel Klein the pink slip just like so many educators were given the pink slip.” Another, organizer Nicola DeMarco, held an orange “eviction notice” that he plans to deliver to the chancellor’s office at midnight.

Joining the group was Ellen Raider, a member of the Parent Commission on School Governance, many of whose members are in Albany now to push for substantial changes to mayoral control. Raider said she was in a celebratory mood not because mayoral control is likely to end but because the commission’s recommendations are finally getting attention.

The event proved short-lived as rain began to fall and the group dispersed. But DeMarco said they would be back later tonight to deliver the eviction notice.

Asked if Bloomberg has indicated whether he would appoint the two board members the law allows him, the Manhattan borough president, Scott Stringer, said he didn’t know. “They are having discussions at City Hall,” Stringer said.

One possibility being batted around is for the mayor to go to court to ask for a preliminary injunction, sources said. A preliminary injunction would freeze the process of reverting from the current centralized governance system to the pre-2002 system. It would stymie the creation of a Board of Education.

Asked about the prospect of a legal injunction, Stringer said he opposed it. “If you let the courts run the school system, you’re basically putting the school system into receivership,” he said. “I don’t think that’s something we should deal with.”

In his public appearances, the mayor has not committed to cooperating with the borough presidents in reconstituting the Board of Education.

At a noon press conference today, held via webcast with Governor Paterson, the mayor said that regardless of the law’s possible expiration, chancellor Joel Klein would keep his job. “The chancellor is still in charge of the school system,” Bloomberg said. “He has a contract and we will honor that contract.”

According to the law, this contract (see below) will be void at midnight tonight if the state Senate allows mayoral control to expire. The power to decide who is chancellor will then shift to the Board of Education rather than the mayor. Four of the five borough presidents have already signaled that they would vote to retain Klein.

Stringer, speaking to reporters on the steps of Tweed Courthouse, said he will appoint a member to the board after consulting with other borough presidents, with the city, and with the business community. “I believe that we’re going to meet early in the morning,” he said.

Patrick Sullivan, Stringer’s current appointee to the Board of Education, which is now known as the Panel for Educational Policy, said he has told Stringer he would serve if asked. “I said I’d be happy to,” Sullivan said in a phone interview. “I’m encouraged that there are finally discussions, that the administration is finally engaging with the borough presidents. We’ve been asking for that for weeks.”

At his press event, Stringer reiterated his position that, once constituted, the Board of Education should vote to give authority over the schools to Chancellor Joel Klein. Doing so makes sense both legally and in terms of “what’s right” for the city and its schoolchildren, he said.

A compromise would find a middle ground between the bill introduced by state Senator Frank Padavan, with the support of Mayor Bloomberg, and the one introduced by Senator John Sampson, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, who favors adding checks to the mayor’s power. But it would still mean the June 30 deadline would pass without a new school governance law to replace it.

That’s because in order to become law, both houses of the legislature have to vote for the same bill. But a compromise bill would be different from the one the Assembly passed two weeks ago.

“Our point is that schools will open up as usual tomorrow, even if mayoral control expires,” said the spokesman, Shomwa Shamapande. “Let’s get the legislation right and make sure parents have a voice.”

Shamapande would not disclose details of the talks he said are underway, saying he does not want to jeopardize the effort. I asked him if he is confident the talks will produce a compromise. “We’re hopeful. I’m not going to go with confident,” he said.

No other lawmakers returned calls immediately to confirm the talks.

Meanwhile, members of the Parent Commission on School Governance, which advocated for more parental involvement in the city’s public schools, are also calling in with optimism. Patricia Connelly, a member of the commission who is in Albany today, said that the commission’s favored bill picked up two new Senate co-sponsors yesterday, Eric Adams and Toby Ann Stavisky. The bill already had three co-sponsors: Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Velmanette Montgomery, and John Sampson, the acting Democratic leader. UPDATE: Shirley Huntley is the bill’s main sponsor. I neglected to mention her before.

Parent commission members are also hoping that the Senate passes a bill with stronger checks to the mayor’s power — even if that means mayoral control expires for some time period. “Are you kidding, of course! I’d rather have it expire than have the Padavan-Silver bill pass,” said Leonie Haimson, a member of the commission who is also in Albany. “There’s no debate on that one.”

UPDATE: Another set of parent leaders, including the group Time Out From Testing, the Center for Immigrant Families, and the president of a Manhattan parent council, are also saying the impasse creates an opportunity to check the mayor’s power over the school system. The parents say they want a “true partnership” with the mayor, rather than a dictatorship where he runs the public schools unilaterally.

Here’s a statement they sent out today:

Parent leaders today called attention to the  tremendous potential provided by the sunsetting of the mayoral control law that dictates the terms of governance for the New York City school system.

Jane Hirschmann, chair of Time Out From Testing, said, “This is a golden opportunity to return public education to the public. For seven years we have had a dictatorship, an administration that is not accountable to anyone – most especially to parents, children, teachers and taxpayers. Parents have been sold a bill of goods about test scores, graduation rates, dropout rates, bus schedules, and school safety. Children have themselves become test scores, subjected to a never-ending schedule of  interim assessments, test prep and high stakes exams that control curriculum and instruction.”

For taxpayers , the past seven years have been a disaster with no bid contracts totaling several hundreds of millions of dollars that have been a bonanza for private companies such as McGraw Hill and IBM.

Perla Placencia from the Center for Immigrant Families remarked, “Building a meaningful partnership among parents, schools, and communities toward achieving high-quality education for all our children is fundamentally inconsistent with the top-down and undemocratic system of mayoral control of our schools.”  Tina Pack, parent leader who has 6 school-aged children, added:  “We need to recognize parents as our children’s first educators and make sure that we build a system that maximizes the critical role they play, together with educators, in our children’s growth and learning.”

Lisa Donlan, President of CEC1, said, “This is a great opportunity to give parents, teachers and communities shared decision making power at the district level by allowing the CECs to act as interim community school boards and to re-empower district superintendents to support schools in their districts.”

“Parents are calling for a true partnership, not a dictatorship, revealed through a board that is fairly constituted with power spread among parent representatives, elected officials (including the mayor) and outside experts–a board where the Mayor does not have the majority of votes or appointments. We need transparency, most particularly a mechanism that provides oversight of contracts and educational data such as test scores, graduation rates and teacher turnover,” added Hirschmann.

Courtesy of the Bronx borough president's office

No one can accuse Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. of being unprepared for the possibility that mayoral control will expire tonight. Diaz just named his potential appointee to the theoretical Board of Education.

That person is Dr. Dolores Fernandez, a professor of urban education at CUNY’s Graduate Center who retired as president of Hostos Community College in 2008.

Fernandez’s appointment will become effective at midnight tonight if the 2002 mayoral control law expires and the Senate does not pass a law to replace it.

Diaz said in a statement today that he is “a supporter of some form of mayoral control.” Asked if Diaz would recommend that his appointee to the board vote to retain Joel Klein as chancellor, John DeSio, a spokesman for the borough president, would not comment yesterday. “He has mixed opinions on the chancellor,” DeSio said.

Fernandez could not immediately be reached for comment. In a release put out by Diaz’s office, she said:

“For me, it is an honor to be thought of by Borough President Diaz to represent The Bronx on the Board of Education. I look forward to serving our borough, and its children, in an admirable and professional way.”

Between 1988 and 1990, Fernandez was deputy chancellor for instruction and development for the Board of Education. She served under chancellor Richard Green, the system’s first black chancellor, who died suddenly a year into his tenure of an asthma attack, leaving the school system in disarray. Fernandez has a Master’s in Education and a professional diploma in Educational Administration.

The full press release follows.

BRONX BOROUGH PRESIDENT RUBEN DIAZ, JR ANNOUNCES HIS APPOINTMENT FOR THE BOARD OF EDUCATION

Dr. Dolores Fernandez will be the Bronx representative on the newly reconstituted Board of Education, effective following the sunset of mayoral control on July 1.

Today, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., announced the appointment of Dr. Dolores Fernandez as the Bronx representative on the newly reconstituted Board of Education, effective following the sunset of mayoral control on July 1.

A resident of City Island, Dr. Fernandez had served as the president of Hostos Community College from 1998 until her retirement this year. She currently serves as a professor of urban education at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center in Manhattan.

“Though I am a supporter of some form of mayoral control, and I am disappointed that the current law was allowed to expire, the business of our children is too important to wait for Albany to act. Dr. Fernandez is a highly qualified, well respected educator with a long resume of accomplishments, and she will be a strong voice for the over one million public school children of the City. I am proud to appoint Dr. Fernandez to the Board of Education, and I look forward to working closely with her to craft an ambitious education agenda for the students of The Bronx and all five boroughs,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.

“For me, it is an honor to be thought of by Borough President Diaz to represent The Bronx on the Board of Education. I look forward to serving our borough, and its children, in an admirable and professional way,” said Dr. Fernandez.

In addition to her work at Hostos Community College, Dr. Fernandez served as deputy chancellor for instruction and development for the Board of Education under Chancellor Richard R. Green from 1988-1990. Dr. Fernandez also served as director of education and deputy commissioner for program services for the New York State Division for Youth under Governor Mario Cuomo. An educator since 1978, Dr. Fernandez has also served as a teacher in Queens District 29, as well as the Long Island communities of Long Beach and Hempstead, during her career.

Dr. Fernandez graduated cum laude from Nassau Community College, earned a B.S. in Education from The State University of New York (SUNY) at Old Westbury, and received a Master’s in Education, as well as a professional Diploma in Educational Administration, from Long Island University (LIU) – C.W. Post College. She then earned her Professional Diploma in Reading and her Ph.D., in Language and Cognition from Hofstra University.

Mayor Bloomberg appeared via satellite at a press conference in Albany today. I watched via webcast.

As Governor Paterson said he will give the state Senate a last chance to operate at 7 o’clock tonight, Mayor Bloomberg outlined his plan for what happens if mayoral control expires at midnight. The plan was, by his own admission, murky and short on details.

First, he said, “the lawyers take over in New York City”:

Every decision – from personnel decisions to policy decisions — will be subject to litigation and uncertainty. That’s no ways to run a school system. It will be like a nightmare flashback to the days when politics ruled the schools and our children suffered the consequences.

Critics of mayoral control and people who are familiar with the pre-2002 school system have disputed this characterization, saying chaos would not ensue if mayoral control expires.

Governor Paterson echoed Bloomberg’s concerns, saying that if mayoral control expires the city’s public schools will descend into “total chaos.”

Bloomberg, speaking via satellite from City Hall at a press conference in Albany, said he will work to “shield the system from the chaos the Senate is experiencing and is planning to inflict on city schoolchildren”:

Make no mistake about it: We will not allow our schools to be padlocked or summer school to be canceled. Summer school starts tomorrow, no ifs ands or buts. The kids that are going to summer school need help. And we are going to provide it.

We’ll keep things running to the best of our ability and deal with questions as they arise, that is our responsibility. But we are going into uncharted territory, and there’s no crystal ball. Our job will be to try to shield new york children and their parents from the chaos to the best of our ability and continue to press the Senate for action.

The NYCLU and Sikh community members demanded protection against discrimination at a press conference this morning. They said their push could be helped if mayoral control is revised.

Mayor Bloomberg refused to take questions on mayoral control at a press conference this morning, and two school-related groups staged protests outside City Hall and Tweed Courthouse without addressing the 2002 law directly.

That’s despite the fact that mayoral control is set to expire in 12 hours if the state Senate doesn’t pass legislation today. With the Senate still locked in a court battle, chances of a resolution look dimmer by the minute — and a reconstituted Board of Education looks more and more likely.

Bloomberg said he will address the small matter of the deadlocked legislature at 12:30 today, at a press conference where he will virtually appear next to Governor Paterson, who is in Albany.

Meanwhile, a group including the New York Civil Liberties Union and Sikh community members demanded more protection from discrimination this morning, in a protest outside the Department of Education’s Tweed Courthouse headquarters. The group accused the DOE of not enforcing a regulation that is supposed to protect children from discriminating against each other in school.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, said the issue relates directly to mayoral control. The NYCLU has argued the current mayoral control law wrongly insulates the school system from following city law. “The refusal of the DOE to protect kids has to be looked at in the context of mayoral control,” Lieberman told our Anna Phillips, who is at City Hall this morning. (The Assembly’s version of a revised mayoral control law does not clarify whether the Department of Education must follow city law, as NYCLU advocated.)

Another group stood outside City Hall this morning to urge City Council members to make two Muslim holy days into public school holidays. The council’s education committee voted to make that change last week.

UPDATE: Mayor Bloomberg signaled he opposes making the holidays into school holidays, Azi reports at Politicker:

“One of the problems you have with a diverse city is if you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school,” Bloomberg said. “And so we have to understand that we’re going to close for those holidays where there is a very large number of kids who practice the particular religion that has the holiday and we’ll try to make accommodations” for others.

Bloomberg went on to say, “We just cannot continue to give days off from school for every single holiday. Educating our kids requires time in the classroom and that’s the most important thing to us, more than anything else.”

Don’t get me wrong, pre-service training for Fellows is rigorous and comprehensive. In six short, stressful weeks, our training covered every aspect of teaching that a school administrator could question you about. From classroom management to guided reading, I “knew” what it meant to be a teacher. The only thing I didn’t actually know, apart from some summer school teaching experience, was what it was actually like to be a teacher. And ironically in spite of this, I felt no anxiety about being hired.

Now, two years later, I have survived my trial by fire.* When I talk about my literacy block, I have 360+ literacy blocks to draw from in my mind. When I talk about reaching struggling students, I have a dozen or more students that come to mind. And yet, all this experience doesn’t make me feel any more secure in my interviews. In a way, the practical experience of teaching has complicated my understanding of how a classroom should work. I can only hope that complexity is a positive sign of experience, and will show that I can be asset wherever I teach. Either way, going into interviews with a bit of humility is probably for the best in the end.

*Everyone claims that their first-year classroom is filled with “the worst kids in the school.” Funny coincidence, huh? I know my class was no exception. I’ve also realized since that the reason these kids always end up in first-year teachers’ classrooms is that first-year teachers have virtually no management skills.

Ruben Brosbe just finished his second year teaching in the Bronx. He is writing about his experiences looking for a new position after being excessed this spring. He also blogs at Is Our Children Learning?

A group is planning to celebrate the end of mayoral control with a party in the park next to the Department of Education’s Manhattan headquarters, beginning at the perhaps-premature hour of 4:30 p.m. The law does not expire until midnight.

The event’s organizer, Nicola DeMarco, told me he expects between 25 and 50 people to join him at the party, which will conclude at midnight when the group tries to symbolically evict Schools Chancellor Joel Klein from Tweed Courthouse.

DeMarco has been teaching in the city since 1994 and is currently assigned to a teacher reassignment center, sometimes called “the rubber room.” He said the main point of the event is for teachers and parents to share their experiences living under mayoral control. “We’ve all been impacted by the scorch-and-burn policy to raise test scores,” he said.

Below is the press announcement that I received (from multiple people) yesterday:

Teachers, Principals, Guidance Counselors, paraprofessionals, secretaries, parents, families and community members will be gathering to celebrate the end of Bloomberg and Klein’s control of the New York City Schools beginning at 4:30 P.M. Tuesday June 30, 2009 in the park on the east side of 52 Chambers Street in Manhattan. At the stroke of midnight, June 30, we will serve eviction papers on Joel Klein to remove himself and his cronies from 52 Chambers Street, The “Boss Tweed Courthouse” immediately.

For more information of this celebration, call Nicola DeMarco at 917-374-5220 or 718-884-2069 or email at nickdmarco@hotmail.com

Some of the most obvious potential litigants said today that as long as Mayor Bloomberg follows the new law, they want to stay out of court. They say they will trust that Mayor Bloomberg plans to respect the current law’s expiration if a new city school board is convened on Wednesday. That board would have only two mayoral appointees.

“If the mayor acts in good faith on that measure, at least changing the structure on top, then I think its wrong to foresee any potential litigation,” said Udi Ofer, the policy director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has been agnostic on the principle of mayoral control.

But a DOE official said the city is worried most about litigation coming not from good-government groups but from individual teachers, principals, and vendors with gripes against the system.

“Every decision has a winner and a loser, and a loser would argue that the person who made the decision didn’t have the authority to do it,” the official said. For example, a teacher who was fired could argue that the principal who initiated his termination was not legally appointed, the official suggested.

David Bloomfield, a parent leader and former general counsel to the Board of Education, said the law provides for clear lines of authority, if only the city would prepare for the governance transition.

“The procedures for making this happen are ministerial and require only pieces of paper that should have already been prepared so that there would be stability,” Bloomfield said.

In fact, Bloomfield said, the state education law is so straightforward that he could imagine litigation in only two circumstances: by the mayor against the reconstituted Board of Education, and against the mayor if he decides to engage in “civil disobedience” and flout the new board’s authority.

State civil code provides a legal instrument that is tailor-made for the latter situation, Ofer said. A section of the state’s civil code, Article 78, is meant to allow citizens to compel executives to follow the law. The NYCLU has filed Article 78 claims against the city in the past and would consider filing them after mayoral control’s expiration if the mayor does not convene the school board.

“NYCLU is going to be monitoring this very closely, and if the mayor does not comply with the law, then as we do on every other issue we will consider litigation,” he said.

Also, because Article 78 lawsuits are meant to be less burdensome to file and are evaluated more quickly than other suits where litigants are seeking personal gain, “a regular resident of NYC could bring a lawsuit to force the mayor to follow the law,” Ofer said.

Elected parent leaders have been discussing what they should do if the senate allows mayoral control to expire, according to Rebecca Daniels, the president of a Manhattan parent council that is party to an ongoing lawsuit against multiple education department decisions.

“This is not a discussion that has not come up. It will probably happen,” Daniels said. “I think people will come forward [as plaintiffs] because they’ll demand that they have a voice in their children’s education.”

Other critics of the mayor are holding out hope for a compromise in the State Senate, a prospect that is dimming rapidly.

“We haven’t looked at our legal options at this point,” said Shomwa Shamapande, a spokesman for the Campaign for Better Schools, which is still hoping that the senate will pass a version of the mayoral control law that gives parents more power.

“I don’t think anybody wants to see litigation,” said Patrick Sullivan, a member of the city school board in its current incarnation. ”I don’t think anybody sees the need for it.”

Learn NY’s countdown to mayoral control’s expiration can’t decide when the sun really sets.

Learn NY ad from Politicker.com (Assemby should be spelled Assembly).

Fortunately, both of these were corrected.

Four of the five borough presidents, who will make that decision, have already committed to keeping the chancellor in power.

Letting mayoral control expire would revert the school system to its pre-2002 structure, which is run by a seven-member Board of Education. The borough presidents would appoint five of these members and the mayor would name the other two. It would fall to these appointees to select a schools chancellor, and there’s little doubt they would name Klein.

The lone hold-out is Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. “He has mixed opinions on the chancellor,” said John DeSio, a spokesman for Diaz.

Asked if Diaz would instruct his appointee to vote in favor of Klein, DeSio would not comment.

All of the other borough presidents, or their school board appointees, have said they would favor retaining Klein as chancellor.

At a press conference last week, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said step two after reconfiguring the board would be to “schedule an immediate vote on the retention of Joel Klein.”

In a piece on Huffington Post, he wrote, “For the sake of stability, I favor keeping Chancellor Klein in his position and preserving the Chancellor’s existing authority.”

Stringer and Patrick Sullivan, his appointee to the current citywide school board, the Panel for Education Policy, have never given Klein rave reviews.

Sullivan is the PEP’s fiercest critic of Klein’s policies and is the sole panel member to regularly vote against the Department of Education’s proposals.

For his part, Stringer has called for the local school boards, known as Community Education Councils, to become independent from the DOE. This change would make them similar to the city’s community boards.

In the spring of last year, he released a report criticizing the Department of Education for not building enough schools to meet the growing demand in Manhattan.

Yet, Sullivan can’t imagine the Board of Education firing Klein. “I can’t see that,” he said. “I think it’d be highly unlikely.”

“If a new board must be appointed, I believe they should vote to retain Joel Klein in his current position,” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz wrote in a statement last week. “Mayoral control and the leadership of Chancellor Joel Klein have been good for New York City schools and our children.”

Dmytro Fedkowskyj, who was appointed to the PEP by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, said he would like to see fixed terms for the PEP. Still, if he were appointed to the Board of Education, he would support Joel Klein. “As far as changing a horse in midstream, that could be catastrophic,” he said.

James Molinaro, the Staten Island borough president who fired his PEP appointee in 2004 when the person disagreed with a Bloomberg administrations policy, is also supporting Klein.

Benjamin reports:

“We said we are dealing with noncontroversial bills. In our conference mayoral control is a controversial issue, and we would like some input,” [Senator John] Sampson told reporters.

“…The mayor said he does not want the bill to change. Period. But they have to understand that we have a conference that is 31 members strong, and we represent constituencies throughout the State of New York.”

Asked by the DN’s Glenn Blain if he is ruling out the passage of the mayoral control bill before the 2002 measure sunsets tomorrow, Sampson replied:

“Am I ruling it out? It will be taken up at some point in time.”

Pressed Blain: “Before the deadline?”

Said Sampson: “As I said before, we are dealing with noncontroversial bills.”

No, please, take your time.

One day before June 30, a lobbying group has launched an ad campaign to pressure the state Senate to renew mayoral control.

Learn NY, which is urging Senators to pass a version of the Assembly’s bill, is running advertisements, sending out robocalls, and planting its volunteers in the halls of the state capital today. The plan, according to spokeswoman Julie Wood, is to put enough pressure on state senators to force them to bring the issue to a vote.

“We’re in real jeopardy of having the school system be in chaos,” Wood said, echoing the mayor’s escalating warnings of anarchy.

The banner ads, which are running on three New York City politics websites — Politicker, Daily Politics, and NY1 — urge readers to call their state Senators and ask them to “pass the Assembly’s education reform bill now.”

There’s also a campaign to get people to sign the group’s online petition, as well as robocalls, which are going out to New Yorkers starting today. (If you’ve gotten one — please! — record and send it to tips@gothamschools.org.)

How long the campaign will last remains to be seen, Wood said. She said it’s possible that Learn NY would continue to operate after the school governance question has been settled. The nonprofit organization was created to champion mayoral control.

• The senate is still at a standstill as the mayoral control deadline nears. (NY1, Daily News 1, 2)
• Mayor Bloomberg held a press event yesterday to urge the senate to act. (GothamSchools, NY1, Post)
• Bloomberg used his weekly radio address to push the point. (Staten Island Advance)
• Even if the senate goes back to work, the mayoral control law could still lapse. (Daily News)
• The path to reconstitute the old system would be a rocky one, and the city has contingency plans. (Times)
• Former chancellor Harold Levy says legislators can deal with their concerns later. (Post)
• Randi Weingarten says the senate needs to give kids stability by extending mayoral control. (Post)
• “Absent renewal, no one in the system will be accountable to anyone,” the Post warns.

OTHER NEWS FROM NEW YORK CITY:

• City valedictorians talk about their futures and how they would improve the city schools. (Times)
• Francis Lewis HS principal Musa Ali Shama speaks out about overcrowding at his school. (Daily News)
• City Catholic schools outperform public schools on state tests. (Post)
• PS 20′s principal, Sean Keaton, pleaded not guilty to assaulting one of his teachers. (Daily News)
• PS 20 students invited Keaton to speak; the Times says problems there stem from a culture clash.
• A Brooklyn principal is under investigation for collecting pay despite not showing up for school. (Post)
• The Post breaks down the complaints against teachers currently sitting in the rubber room.
• An arts high school in Queens had Tony Bennett and Bruce Willis at its graduation. (Post)

AND BEYOND:

• Long Island principals are planning to protest the short-notice state test schedule change. (Newsday)
• Jonas Chartock discusses SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute, which he heads. (Albany Times-Union)
• Boston’s mayor has become a charter school supporter despite strong opposition. (Wall Street Journal)
• Jay Mathews challenges unions to prove that they can do as well as charter schools. (Washington Post)
• An audit found that many D.C. charter schools steer special education students away. (Washington Post)
• A program to help struggling teachers through peer review is growing slowly. (Washington Post)