It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC.

Happy Friday, everybody.

We'll start today with another look at a specific issue in the New York City

mayoral race, with mail-in voting already underway. Primary days June 24th.

There is only a Democratic Party primary for mayor. The Republican nominee will be Curtis

Lewa as he was in 2021. Our issue for today, getting shockingly little attention to my eye compared

to how central it is to New Yorkers is the state of education

in the city's public schools. We will replay all the answers from the nine candidates in Wednesday

night's debate sponsored by WNNBC TV and Politico. They only got 30 seconds each on the topic

so we can get through these easily enough as, you know, ways to launch a conversation.

Obviously, they couldn't solve public education in 30 seconds.

But it was interesting to me that different candidates were raising different strategies and emphases.

So let's discuss. With us for this is Alex Zimmerman, reporter at

the education news website, Chalkbeat, who has written about education and the candidates. Alex,

thanks so much for coming on for this. Welcome to WNIC. Thanks. It's great to be here, Brian.

And here's how the moderator, Sally Goldenberg from Politico, asked the question.

The city spends more of its tax dollars on public schools than anything else. But after shelling

out some $40,000 a year per student, only about half of New York City kids can read or do math

at grade level. Only half. Bottom line here, what do you see

is the top reason for that dismal return on this $41 billion a year investment, and how would

you turn it around as mayor? So that was the question. Now we'll play the first three answers that

candidates gave from Michael Blake, Zeranamamani, and Whitney Tilsen. Here's Michael

...