“Watch for what you pray for, because you just might get it” – the saying has to be on Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s mind as he and his representatives haggled with state legislators over the issue of school governance.

Well, he finally has his wish and now it will be his responsibility to raise the educational standards of more than one million students.

Someone told me two weeks ago that I was the insane one for suggesting a wait of a few more years before having Bloomberg take on responsibility for the City’s schools. 

I felt and wrote that I believed that it would be too much for the mayor and that giving him the job now would be setting him up for failure.

While I still believe this may be one plate too many spinning on the end of a stick for this administration, having seen the final plan of what the new education board structure will look like, I have softened my position on the likelihood of failure and the ramifications if such a failure occurs.

Under the ‘new’ New York City public school education system, the Mayor picks the Schools Chancellor, who like his commissioners, he can hire and fire without wasting time with political showboating and backstabbing to either keep or get rid of them. 

That has bogged down the old system for as long as it has existed — certainly at least in the last decade where there have been so many different chancellors.

The new system also makes the Board less of a patronage trough since now it will be the Mayor’s chancellor who picks the local School board superintendents. 

I like the fact that the Mayor cannot use the Board as a budgetary sacrificial lamb in a pinch.

Now, most of the money spent at local boards is now going to be centralized. 

For too long, the power over spending has been too tempting a fruit not to pick — we saw that happen right here with the indictment of Celestine Miller a few years ago.

But remember, it was only 30 years ago when the system that is being dismantled now, was put into place.  

Spurned by the same anger and disappointment over poor performance and poor learning conditions back in the late 1960’s the system was de-centralized. 

One obvious concern is that a new centralized system may deprive already disenfranchised communities because those who are in charge only think like Manhattanites.

As a child of public education I have seen this system deteriorate into one that I would not send my kids into for fear that it could handicap them in their growth into adults.

It has long been the shame of the greatest city in world — that it has not been able to provide an education equal to that of their upstate and national peers. 

Beyond reading and writing, the system has been devoid of extra- curricular and cultural activities that provide balance to a young person’s life. 

No change will bring that back in a short period of time but we have to start somewhere.

It appears now the only person standing in the way of Mike Bloomberg, and all his education campaign promises, is Mike Bloomberg  

Stay tuned.

— Gary Anthony Ramsay is a weekend anchor
and journalist on the all-news
cable station NY1 and along-time resident of Queens.