NEW YORK — With over 1,800 schools and more than 1.1 million students, the city’s public school system is one of the most direct ways city government touches the lives of New Yorkers — and overseeing it will soon be the job of a new mayor.

He or she will have a lot to grapple with — from helping students get back on track and into classrooms after the coronavirus pandemic, to tackling admissions processes that critics say keep classrooms segregated.

And on some big issues, there are big differences between the candidates.

Andrew Yang has called for keeping the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), and adding more specialized schools so each borough has two.

On the other end of the spectrum, Dianne Morales has proposed getting rid of all screening. That would mean no middle or high school could use an exam or grades to grant admission.

When it comes to Gifted and Talented classes, virtually all the candidates agree there’s a problem with testing students in kindergarten. But they have different ideas on what to do about it. Some favor using other measures to identify gifted children. Maya Wiley co-chaired a panel that recommended the city end the use of separate gifted and talented classes, a proposal she says she stands by.

And some candidates have tried to make a splash with outside-of-the-box ideas. Eric Adams has proposed ending summer vacation and starting education early — really early. He has proposed the city offer doulas to all first-time mothers, saying “the first classroom is in the mother’s womb.”

But the biggest issue facing all these candidates if they win has to be managing a school system that will be trying to move forward after a massively disruptive pandemic. And plenty of them have criticisms about how the current mayor has handled things — and have thoughts on what they’d have done differently.

“The part of what the failure of this mayor and the Department of Education was all about, was not planning responsibly for recognizing that there was real inequity in the remote learning process,” Scott Stringer said in early April. “They took their sweet time, knowing that so many kids were outside the remote learning system. And now these are the kids that are going to be farther behind.”

Stringer made those comments at a forum the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) held as it narrowed down its endorsement, saying its “Final Four” were Stringer, Wiley, Adams, and Yang. Yang, who was critical of the union, is considered a longshot to get its nod.

Other leading Democratic mayoral candidates’ positions on education:

• Supports longer school days or school years and classes year-round
• Calls for hiring more teachers and school leaders of color to bring the rate to at least 65% of all teachers, and 70% of all school leaders, over the next ten years
• Supports the District 15 desegregation model, in which the academic screening process was eliminated and middle school students were chosen by lottery
• Proposes limiting seats reserved for students in neighborhood zones
• Calls for reducing reliance on student suspensions and other disciplinary measures, wants de-escalation measures in schools
• Vows to eliminate all admissions screens for middle schools and some screens for high schools
• Says the SHSAT should be modified, but eliminated if the new test fails to increase admission diversity

• Wants to build new high schools in every borough, with a focus on South Brooklyn, central Queens, and the South Bronx
• On a school by school basis, backs removing the police from schools or redirecting NYPD funds to the city education department
• Criticizes Gifted and Talented testing, but doesn’t want to get rid of it
• Wants to open new specialized high schools, guarantee admissions to students who graduate in the top 10% of their middle school
• Backs mayoral control of city schools
• Says she wouldn’t create a paid council to allow young New Yorkers to have input on educational policy decisions, but backed an unpaid version
• Wants a focus on the mental health of students who lost parents to COVID-19

• Wants to expand Gifted and Talented programs
• Criticizes high-stakes exams, but does not support ending traditional testing or standardized testing
• Wants criteria for the SHSAT to be expanded to include grades, recommendations, essays, extracurricular activities, and other factors
• Calls for public school classes of no more than 15 students, keeping students in one location while rotating teachers, testing of students once per week and twice a week for school staff
• Wants public schools open for full-day in-person classes this summer, backs extending school days and weekend classes during the 2021-2022 school year
• Promises to create a program to retrain students to prepare them for the workforce, such as by giving them software engineering training
• Says all high school students will be guaranteed a summer job if they want one

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