Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani emerged from his weekend confrontation with the Schools Chancellor largely with what he wanted: a mayoral appointee empowered to look into the inner workings and finances of the Board of Education.
But with a confrontational style that briefly produced the resignation of Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, the Mayor, a Republican, irritated many of the city's other political leaders and used up some of the good will he needs to push through his long-term agenda in a predominantly Democratic city.
Many elected leaders said yesterday that only Governor Mario M. Cuomo's intervention had kept the city from what would have been a costly, divisive search for a new chancellor. And they hoped the scare would make Mr. Giuliani slightly more conciliatory, as he became momentarily when he agreed to Mr. Cuomo's mediation.
"I think the Mayor ran into his first political shootout, and I at least give him credit for pulling back on this thing," said Howard Golden, the Brooklyn Borough President. He expressed sympathy for the Mayor's desire to get independent information about the school system's finances, but added, "I guess he's learning you can't do it his way by firing people; you've got to work with people."
Ruth W. Messinger, the Manhattan Borough President, who is considered a possible mayoral challenger in 1997, said the lesson was simple. "Cooperation, negotiation, persuasion are key parts of leadership -- not just toughness," she said.
But Mr. Giuliani was buoyant yesterday. "It wasn't the smoothest way to get to where we wanted to go, but we finally got there," he said, laughing and joking on a morning radio show. "We finally got to what we had to achieve."
Struggles between mayors and the Board of Education are common, both because the nation's largest school system spends $8 billion a year and because the public tends to hold mayors responsible for the state of the city's schools.
And from the start of what has been a bruising two-month budget battle with Mr. Cortines, the Giuliani administration had banked on the popularity of the Mayor's stand against the bureaucracy at Board of Education headquarters at 110 Livingston Street.
But the Mayor left many city officials thinking he had gone too far -- even looking petty -- when he tried to force Mr. Cortines at a midnight meeting on Thursday to dismiss not just the Board of Education's budget director, Leonard Hellenbrand, but also its press spokesman, John H. Beckman, who had once worked for former Mayor David N. Dinkins.
And when Mr. Giuliani pushed Mr. Cortines to the point of tendering his resignation on Friday, he learned that the Chancellor had built up an enormous amount of support in seven months, with parents' groups, teachers and the city's political establishment rallying to Mr. Cortines's side.
Still, Mr. Giuliani's aides contended yesterday that no matter how messy the whole confrontation had been, Mr. Giuliani was largely triumphant. He was ultimately spared the liability of a new search for a chancellor to run the school system when Mr. Cortines agreed to stay. And he was able to deputize Herman Badillo to poke into the inner workings of the Board of Education just as he had wanted, simply by calling Mr. Badillo something other than a fiscal monitor.
The Mayor's chief of staff, Randy M. Mastro, said he saw no reason why Mr. Giuliani should change his style. "The Mayor is an agent of change," Mr. Mastro said. "He is going to hang tough to see if the necessary changes are made, and he hung tough in this case."
In fact, one mayoral adviser promised that the next target of Mr. Giuliani's battle to take control of government would be the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which like the Board of Education gets money from the city but is not directly responsible to the Mayor.
What the administration did not concede is that many people helped the Mayor out of a jam: the negotiations involved not just Mr. Cuomo, but the Board of Education President, Carol A. Gresser, and even the former chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation, Felix G. Rohatyn, who joined the negotiations by telephone from Switzerland, where he was on vacation.
Outside the administration, elected officials and political leaders wondered who would be around to help out again if Mr. Giuliani continued his pattern of highly personal criticisms and ultimatum politics.
Even such a staunch Giuliani supporter as former Mayor Edward I. Koch said that he thought the Mayor had gone too far by telling an independent agency who should be dismissed and hired, although he said yesterday that he thought Mr. Giuliani had come out victorious. "I thought it was an error, but it worked," he said. "Even a cat has nine lives. Rudy has used up one. He should conserve the other eight."
There were also questions about how long Mr. Giuliani's detente with the Schools Chancellor would last. Puzzled champions of Mr. Cortines said that while he showed over the weekend that he had enormous public support, he then weakened himself by rescinding his resignation so quickly and without a greater concession from the Mayor than simply changing Mr. Badillo's title.
And while Mr. Badillo was not granted a large staff or even clear powers, it was clear that Mr. Giuliani's former running mate was now in a position to second-guess every budgetary decision of the board.
In all, the collision between Mr. Giuliani and school officials may simply have been postponed. In June the entire membership of the seven-member board comes up for reappointment, and while the current membership largely supports Mr. Cortines, changes are expected in both the personalities and power relationships there.
When the new board is seated, Mr. Giuliani will have the allegiance of two members he himself appoints, and is likely to have the strong support of members appointed by the borough presidents of Queens and Staten Island, preserving a 4-to-3 majority, but with new personalities.
The budget negotiations between the city and school system are months from completion.
Quite apart from his feud with Mr. Cortines, Mr. Giuliani made quite clear last week why he wanted borough boards. "The proposal for borough governance is the only realistic proposal to shake up and to end 110 Livingston Street," he said. "It's the only realistic way in which it's going to happen."
