New York’s Legislature must now move quickly to renew mayoral control of the city’s schools, and with minimal changes, if it hopes to preserve a system that’s been a marked improvement over its predecessors for the past 20 years. Albany’s failure this week to renew it in this year’s budget deal betrayed an obscene cynicism that needs to be overcome immediately.

And make no mistake: Adding “tweaks” to the system (that are really concessions to various interest groups — most notably, the powerful teachers union) would be a clear sign of disregard for the city’s schoolchildren. Similarly, to hold the renewal hostage in negotiations with the mayor on other policy issues would be politics at its worst.

Remember, the law giving city mayors control over schools is set to expire June 30.

True, no system of governance is perfect, but the adoption of mayoral control in 2002 came after the utter disaster of two previous governance models: the first, decentralized control for 32 elected district boards in the ’70s, and the second, a centrally dominated, bureaucratic approach, with a central board of education appointed by (and beholden to) six different elected officials, in the ’80s and ’90s.

No one person was in charge and accountable for improvement in those years, and the results showed the impact. From the early 1980s through 2001, the high-school graduation rate was stuck at 50% and impervious to numerous efforts to improve it. Since then, that rate has improved to over 70%, even after discounting the impact of lax grading standards during the pandemic.

Historically, the city always scored below the state average on annual exams, but that’s not the case today. While there are Department of Education schools with unacceptably low-performance levels, the city as a whole outpaced the state average in 2019, the last year of full testing.

Some of us were sorely disappointed in the de Blasio administration’s approach, but we now have a mayor and chancellor who seem more aligned with the school initiatives of the Bloomberg administration, adapted to their own priorities and to the current era.

Others chafed at Bloomberg’s approach, including the closing of low-performing schools, expanded choice and school and staff accountability for results. In 2013, they and others elected a mayor with opposing views.

Whatever a mayor’s views, though, once elected, he or she should have as much direct control over the schools as over all other city services, and be held responsible for their performance. All mayors keep their eye on the next election and can be expected to respond to critics, within reason. Yes, they can be aloof as lame ducks, à la de Blasio; but change can come as soon as they’re gone.

Some say we need to tweak mayoral control, but the law has already been tweaked; there’s little room for more change without undercutting it materially.

In 2009, the Legislature was concerned that the Bloomberg administration was hiding information about the performance of schools, so lawmakers used the renewal of mayoral control to give the city’s Independent Budget Office the power to access and analyze not only the school system’s financial data, but all its human resources, building and student data as well. (I led that effort at the IBO from 2010 to 2018, and that work continues to this day under my successor.)

A later tweak to the system required the mayor to select at least two public-school parents to serve on the Panel for Educational Policy, in addition to the five parents tapped by the borough presidents.

That panel and the local Community Education Councils should be the public forums through which parents and community members are allowed to voice their opinions about proposed changes in policy. Their voices should be heard and taken seriously, and the city’s leadership should deliberate with parents and community members, not lecture them.

Additional minor changes to the law to ensure this proper public debate may be worthy of consideration — but in the end, the only workable system for governing education in the city is the one we currently have: direct mayoral control. Keep your fingers crossed that Albany will renew it before it expires.

Ray Domanico is a senior fellow and director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute.