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Mayor de Blasio Waits (and Waits) for a New Mandate to Run New York’s Schools

Advocates for mayoral control of New York City schools rallied on the steps of City Hall on Monday.Credit...Harrison Hill/The New York Times

There’s still not much love in Albany for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Hoping to win a last-minute deal in the Legislature to extend mayoral control over city schools, he telephoned the leader of the Republicans in the State Senate, John J. Flanagan, on Monday morning.

They did not speak.

“The heart is willing,” Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, said wistfully at a City Hall news conference a short time later, describing his inability to connect. He said that he has talked to Mr. Flanagan only once in recent weeks — last Thursday or Friday — a sign of his rocky relationship with the Republican leader who year after year has seemed to relish tormenting the mayor over the issue of school control.

Given the mayor’s longstanding difficulties with Mr. Flanagan and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, Mr. de Blasio is not exactly a jilted suitor standing with a wilting bouquet in his hands. Yet he does once again find himself the victim of a game of brinkmanship in the state capital over which he has little or no control.

The legislative session is scheduled to end on Wednesday, and Mr. de Blasio is hoping that the State Senate will reach an agreement before then with the Assembly, led by a mayoral ally, Carl E. Heastie, a Democrat.

If they do not, and if the lawmakers make good on vows to go home for the rest of the year, then the power that the mayor has under state law to choose the city school chancellor and set educational policy will expire at the end of June.

According to the mayor, who was joined at City Hall by other elected officials, union members, activists and a handful of schoolchildren, that would return the city to “the bad old days” when the Board of Education chose the chancellor, and dozens of local school districts around the city went their own way and were plagued, in the mayor’s words, by “chaos and corruption.”

Mr. Heastie favors a multiyear extension, but Mr. Flanagan seems willing to grant that only if he wins concessions on charter schools, which Mr. Heastie opposes. The governor has said he sees a real possibility that no deal will be struck and mayoral control will lapse.

On Monday night, the governor, Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Heastie met in the governor’s office in the Capitol in Albany, along with Jeffrey D. Klein, who leads a breakaway group of independent Democratic senators, while reporters waited outside.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio at Monday’s rally to support his bid for mayoral control of New York City schools.Credit...Harrison Hill/The New York Times

When Mr. Flanagan emerged from the meeting, he said that he planned to call the mayor back. Mr. Klein said of the meeting: “We’ve been talking about a lot of different things. We talked about mayoral control, of course.” He added, “We still have two days to get it done.”

Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, first won mayoral control in 2002 with a seven-year term, and was then given a six-year extension in 2009. But the Republican-led Senate has insisted on keeping Mr. de Blasio on a tighter leash, granting him only annual renewals.

This year, the dynamics in the capital are different.

One complicating factor is that the Legislature does not have major priorities of its own that might be used as leverage. In recent years, many of the major legislative issues have been resolved in the budget, reducing the importance of an agreement at the end of the legislative session, and leaving fewer chips to bargain with at this stage.

While a deal could still be reached on mayoral control, those in the negotiations said that anxiety was higher than in years past. Mayoral control lapsed briefly in 2009 for Mr. Bloomberg, who was on good terms with the State Senate, but it was quickly reinstated.

For Mr. de Blasio, the strategy has been to rally supporters of mayoral control from different parts of city and state life, to show that the issue is one in which there is consensus. There was an opinion article from the former education secretary Arne Duncan, a recent news conference with business leaders, and then Monday’s event at City Hall.

The heavy labor presence appeared aimed, at least in part, at Mr. Heastie and other liberal Assembly members, who have strongly resisted Mr. Flanagan’s bid for concessions on charter schools (the United Federation of Teachers, which strongly opposes easing charter limits, was not present).

Even one of Mr. de Blasio’s potential Republican challengers in this year’s mayoral election, Paul J. Massey Jr., helped to amplify the consensus message, arguing for extending the mayor’s control in a news release on Sunday, while still railing against Mr. de Blasio’s management of the schools.

The usefulness of a visit to Albany by Mr. de Blasio is another matter. His presence there is seen by those close to the negotiations as more of a liability than a benefit when it comes to wooing opponents, and he does not have the ability to make a deal directly with Mr. Flanagan.

That leaves him working the phones — though not always connecting — and rallying the troops from City Hall. And while Mr. de Blasio seemed determined on Monday to sound insistent and conciliatory, others did not hold back.

“What I find outrageous today is that the Republicans in Albany, John Flanagan and his crew, want to get their grubby hands on our kids, and we’re not going to let them do it,” said the city comptroller Scott M. Stringer. “We’re going to fight back.” There was loud applause, but the mayor, standing next to him, appeared to be clenching his teeth.

Jesse McKinley and Lisa W. Foderaro contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Mayor Waits on School Control Renewal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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