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A City Council hearing today on mayoral control became a chance for a chief critic of the power structure to lay out his concerns — a kind of last stand as top lawmakers and advocates move to a more moderate compromise.

The state’s top two lawmakers have embraced keeping a majority of power with the mayor, and their statements led union president Randi Weingarten to back away from a push to yank that majority.

But Council member Robert Jackson, who chairs the education committee and served on his district’s community school board for 15 years, did not appear to be affected by the changing tide at today’s hearing.

For more than six hours, he fielded testimony from people explaining how they have been hurt under mayoral control: schools phased out without consultation from the Department of Education, charter schools operating with better supplies than traditional public schools, and the powerless feeling of serving on the new generation of school boards, Community Education Councils.

Few expressed support for the current system. During cross examinations, Jackson offered his own criticism of mayoral control. At times, he could barely restrain his frustration.

“Talk is cheap,” he told Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, saying he had requested information from the DOE several months ago and had yet to obtain it.

“I wish you’d pick up the phone and call me,” Klein responded.

“I should not have to pick up the phone! It’s a continuous problem,” Jackson shot back. (more…)

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's proposed changes to mayoral control are less drastic than Comptroller Bill Thompson's (right). Photo via Azi's Flickr.

Christine Quinn, the speaker of the City Council, is joining the chorus of voices urging state lawmakers to add checks and balances to the mayor’s authority over the public schools, but she’s proposing a different, slightly softer kind of check.

Rather than strengthening the citywide school board, as the teachers union, the comptroller, and several parent groups have suggested, Quinn wants lawmakers to empower the City Council to do stronger oversight of the mayor’s school policies.

In written testimony Quinn submitted to the state Assembly this week, she describes the arrangement she’d like to see as “municipal” rather than mayoral control. Currently, the Council’s ability to check the mayor’s education policy extends only “up to the door of a school,” she says, citing last year’s cell phone brouhaha as evidence. (The city argued that the council’s legislation overturning Bloomberg’s cell phone ban, which Bloomberg vetoed, but council members over-rode, did not have any effect on the final policy.)

Only state lawmakers have the authority to override the mayor’s school policy, Quinn argues. But she says that doesn’t make sense. “I would never look to weigh in on local education policies in Elmira County, and I don’t think a State legislator from Elmira (no matter how qualified her or she may be) should or wants to be responsible for decisions made about New York City schools,” she writes. (more…)