POLITICS: Mamdani’s pathetic plans for NYC schools prove he doesn’t really want to govern the city at all

Zohran Mamdani dropped his big education “plan” last week — and of course his vision amounts to nothing but bigger spending.

He embraced the perverse state class-size law, which forces New York City (and no other system) to hire thousands more “educators” to no real purpose except to enrich the United Federation of Teachers.

Class sizes are already below the law’s limits in nearly all the city’s (too many) failing schools; it’s the successful ones that will have to boost their teacher-student ratios.

The law may well even require the “crown jewel” elite high schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, etc.) to admit fewer kids, for lack of the classroom space to meet the requirements with current enrollments.

But the leading mayoral candidate either doesn’t know or doesn’t care: He’s pretending to be bold by declaring he’ll devote $12 million to tuition assistance for 1,000 potential teachers a year who’ll promise to take jobs in Department of Education schools for three years.

Hello: The problem isn’t finding warm bodies who’ll technically qualify to teach; it’s finding enough excellent (or at least decent) educators to avoid watering down the talent pool so that fewer students wind up having good teachers.

But this of a piece with Mamdani’s glaring lack of knowledge of — or interest in — the city’s schools.

Yet the DOE’s $41 billion budget dwarfs the NYPD $5.8 billion one: Control of the city’s schools, responsible for educating more than 900,000 kids, is one of any mayor’s biggest and most consequential duties.

Then again, Mamdani says he wants to surrender mayoral control, claiming that the problem is that too many parents and teachers are shut out of decision-making.

And never mind that the guy he says is his role model, Mayor Bill de Blasio, rightly fought like mad to retain this power: What kind of candidate runs for office looking to ditch one of his most important responsibilities?

Mamdani has all kinds of detailed plans for making New York City cheap (“affordable”). Free buses, free day care, discounted groceries, all paid for by other people’s money.

He knows exactly which parts of the NYPD he wants to disband, but when asked about education he’s got next to nothing.

The schools are in a major crisis. Fewer than half of all black and Latino students are proficient in grade-level math and reading.

What’s Mamdani’s plan for saving these kids from a lifetime of illiteracy? His campaign website’s “K-12” section says he “will ensure our public schools are fully funded with equally distributed resources.”

Huh? The city already spends more per pupil than virtually any district on the planet. Calls for “fully funded” schools are nothing but a dodge to avoid facing how terribly the DOE spends all that cash.

How will Mayor Mamdani deal with schools that are clearly failing? Will he demand more from teachers?

His idea for what would replace mayoral control? His platform offers “strengthening co-governance” with multiple layers of community groups and the Panel for Educational Policy — in other words, burying responsibility so deep that no one can find it.

Mamdani’s “plans” for the schools don’t just mean disaster for the city’s children, they’re a dead giveaway on how little interest he has in actually governing Gotham.

His vision extends only to spending money and shackling cops: New York will rue the day if it lets this man become mayor.