For decades, politicians have cast education as a great equalizer and cornerstone of a thriving society. But in New York City’s competitive mayoral race, it is attracting scant attention.

With less than nine weeks until the Democratic primary, none of the major candidates has released a plan centered solely on elementary and secondary education. Across their campaign pages highlighting big issues, the contenders each spend an average of about 75 words talking about education, and “pandemic” is rarely among those words, even though that health cataclysm still exacts a toll on younger generations.

In a city notorious for its divide between opulence and poverty, public education represents both a potential engine of social mobility and one of the biggest ways that local government reaches the everyday lives of New Yorkers.

The school system is charged with educating more students than the entire population of San Francisco, preparing them for college or the work force. The city’s Education Department, with more than 130,000 staff members, is among the region’s top employers. Its $40 billion budget is an unrivaled chunk of spending, exceeding that of the police, fire and health departments combined.

But there is little to suggest how the major Democratic candidates for mayor would address the city’s middling academic performance, despite the latest results of a gold-standard federal exam that revealed alarming declines in reading and math skills among the city’s lowest-performing children.

Most candidates have not offered a robust plan to tackle chronic absenteeism after more than a third of students missed at least 10 percent of school days during the last academic year. Their platforms often fail to address the desperate need for more bilingual staff in schools, even though enrollment of children still learning English is ballooning.

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