If the Mayoral control law sunsets on June 30, 2009, there are governance issues at thelocal level that have the potential to cause serious operational problems in the schoolsduring the summer and fall. These issues require further legal analysis, but aresummarized below.If a new Mayoral control law is not adopted, on June 30 the CommunityEducation Councils will cease to exist, as the statutes creating them expire. Pursuant tothe law, the old community school boards spring back to life. The first governance problem, however, is that by the law’s own terms, community school board memberscannot be elected until May 2010 (this date is set forth in the Education Law, and there isno provision for holding elections at a different time). Furthermore, there appears to beno authority for anyone to appoint temporary community school board members. TheChancellor will have the power to appoint trustees where he removes community school board members for violating the law, but this will not be a situation where a member violated the law. Therefore, the community school boards will exist, but they will haveno members—and will thus be incapable of taking any action.Under the reverted law, each community school board will have the power toemploy the community superintendent by contract. Community superintendents will beappointed by the Chancellor from a list of candidate recommended by the communityschool board. These provisions of the law raise two problems. First, if the communitysuperintendents must, under the law after June 30, be employed via a contract with thecommunity school board, it is entirely unclear that current community superintendentsretain their position after June 30, since none of them has a contract with a communityschool board. Second, there is no way of appointing new community superintendentsafter June 30, because without community school board members, there can be norecommendations made to the Chancellor. Therefore, there is a real possibility that therewill be no community superintendents after June 30. The absence of both community school boards and community superintendentscould have serious repercussions for summer school and for school opening in the fall.The community superintendents, by law, will have the power to hire and fire school staff and to approve or disapprove all instructional matters in the schools. Without acommunity superintendent, schools may be unable to fill teaching and other vacancies or to fire employees who commit crimes and other misconduct. While principals have theauthority to make curricular decisions, those decisions will require the superintendent’sapproval, and without a superintendent, it is not clear how schools can make neededinstructional decisions at all. Additionally, the absence of a superintendent would have a direct impact onchildren who attend summer school in order to meet the DOE’s promotion criteria. Atthe end of the summer, if a student does not achieve a level two on both the ELA andmath tests, the student can still be promoted based upon a review of the student’s portfolio of work. But this review must be done by the superintendent. Without asuperintendent, children in this situation will be unable to achieve promotion. These are complicated issues and require further consideration and analysis. Butat a minimum there could be a lack of clear lines of authority and accountability at the