N.Y.C. Schools Should Manage Themselves, Report Urges

By Ann Bradley

A report by an adviser to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani calling for New York City's schools to manage themselves has intensified debate over the governance of the nation's largest school system.

Individual schools should become the "basic governance and decisionmaking unit'' in the system, urges the report, which was released last month. It was prepared by Edward N. Costikyan, a prominent Manhattan lawyer who has been an adviser to Mr. Giuliani on school reform and an advocate of decentralization.

Mr. Costikyan's recommendations for the system, which he calls "perhaps the worst governmental structure I have ever studied,'' are the fourth set of major proposals for overhauling...