Brian Lair on WNYC.

So a big issue in Albany and for Mayor Mamdani right now is his interest in retaining mayoral control of the New York City public schools for the four

years of this mayoral term. The state legislature has to approve that and is currently

deliberating. In just a minute, we'll have former New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen

Farina, who is working with the Mamdani administration to help make the case for mayoral control.

But one thing that might complicate his ask is that Mamdani started out his campaign for mayor

running against mayoral control.

He said he wanted to end mayoral control to bring more education stakeholders together

to share that power, as you'll hear in this clip from one of the debates.

You'll hear Andrew Cuomo's voice first in this debate clip.

Are you for or against mayoral control?

I've been critical of it. I'm against mayoral control,

and I think that there's an importance of developing something that actually enshrines

all of those voices together.

Actually enshrines all of those voices together. Actually enshrines all of those voices together.

So that was Mamdani early in the campaign.

But by the time of the WNYC debate in October,

Mamdani had changed his mind to embrace mayoral control.

I asked him to clarify in that debate.

Mr. Mamdani, you said you would give up mayoral control of schools and share decision-making

with various stakeholders, but in the last debate, you said you're still for mayoral

accountability for educational outcomes. This is confused some people about how you can give up

...