Mayor Zohran Mamdani attends the 44th Annual National Dominican Day Parade in New York on Monday, August 10, 2026. (Copyright Notice: Copyright (c) 2026 Splash News. No use without permission.) Nancy Rivera / SplashNews.com

Of course Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top priority for governing New York City’s public schools is to empower far-left “commissars” — why worry about soaring illiteracy?

At least three of his 13 new appointees to the Panel for Education Policy are obvious ideologues.

• Lucas Koehler, the City College CFO, called for segregated antiracism struggle sessions in city schools during his stint at the city Department of Education from 2014 to ’22. 
• Raysa Rodriguez heads the Citizens Committee for Children, which has repeatedly called for defunding the police.
• Madeline Fox, a CUNY Graduate Center prof, joined Jewish faculty at CUNY, Berkeley and Georgetown in signing a letter denying antisemitism exists on US campuses and accusing Israel of genocide.

What a great bunch to address how the share of city schoolchildren failing state reading tests just jumped roughly 10 points — to more than half of 3rd- to 5th-graders.

Per a new Empire Center poll, 95% of New Yorkers say the DOE needs to improve reading and math scores, but the mayor plainly thinks the schools need more “social justice”-obsessed overseers.

But Mamdani doesn’t even pretend to have a clue about how to boost student proficiency in reading, math or science — let alone something as basic as reversing soaring numbers of chronic absenteeism.

The only education the Democratic Socialists care about is indoctrination — so that’s going to be this mayor’s stamp on the public schools.