Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on WCBS 880

June 21, 2017

Wayne Cabot: Good morning Bill de Blasio.

Mayor: Good morning, how you doing?

Cabot: I’m fine. Are you up against a midnight deadline here to hang on to the city schools?

Mayor: Well that’s right. Look the legislatures in Albany and the Governor, they have to get this done by the end of the night or of course, they can extend, they can stick around. I have all the way until June 30 before mayoral control of education expires. But they’re certainly taking this one down to the wire. We’re doing everything we can to push them to action.

Steve Scott: At the heart of this, the issue of charter schools we have, and I’m wondering how we move things along on that. People would tend to look at this and say well the Mayor, and the Democrats, and the teachers union on one side and the Republicans and the charter schools on the other side. How do we kind of move things along? Where is there room for a compromise on this issue that’s at the heart of this Mayor?

Mayor: First of all, a lot of folks who very strongly support charter schools have said there should not be a linkage when you’re deciding something as important as mayoral control of education. Mayoral control is what allows everything else to happen. The way we turned around the schools, you know pre-K for all, what we’ve with computer science for all in our classrooms, higher graduation rates, higher test scores. That’s because of mayoral control. By the way I would have said the same about the time when Mayor Bloomberg was in office. He was able to make big progress on the schools because of mayoral control.

The charter school issue is a valid issue but it should not be a quid pro quo in this case. And look, this is clear to me the legislatures have a chance to resolve this issue. We – I’ve talked to all of them. I talked to every single one of the legislative leaders last night and to the Governor, and we’re willing to be creative about a solution but it begins with them understanding if mayoral control lapses then you’ve got 1.1 million kids that have no one in charge and there’s no accountability for their education and their future.

Cabot: No accountability? There’s a Chancellor right?

Mayor: There’s a Chancellor but remember what happens under mayoral control. First you have to – this would be as early as July 1st, you have to create the old Board of Education again. There’s no majority, no one has a majority so it’s a lot of working things through and bluntly what we saw in the past, a lot of horse trading between elected officials. Then you have to go have elections for 32 local school boards, and they choose their own principals and superintendents and make their own budget. Things like pre-K for example won’t exist consistently across the city anymore if 32 local school boards around the city are making individual decisions for their districts. So it’s a really big deal. 

Scott: What’s you guess on what happens today? I mean, will you be working the phones?  Will you be Republicans in the Senate, Leader Flanagan and others trying to get this through?

Mayor: Absolutely. I spoke to Leader Flanagan at 6 pm last night, we’ve been – my personal up there in Albany, we have a big contingency up there, they’ve been talking to the Senate Republicans and everyone up there. Chancellor Farina was up there yesterday. We’ve offered a number of ideas about how to resolve this. It’s about will. These guys have to decide its important enough to get this done before the go away for the whole summer. And, you know, think about it for a moment, they literally leave as you said for the whole summer, don’t have to come back while something this important is hanging in the balance. I think if Albany doesn’t get this done there’s going to be a lot of angry people in the city.

Cabot: The Mayor of the City of the New York, Bill de Blasio. Thank you, sir.

Mayor: You’re very, very welcome.