A life-size cardboard image of President Barack Obama faces Mayor Bob Duffy's desk. It's a new addition, though a bit jarring, to an office that is filled chockablock with little mementos from Duffy's long career in public service.

At a meeting earlier this week, Duffy said that he is no closer to making a decision on mayoral control of the city school district than he was a month ago. He needs to do more research, he said.

"One thing I do know is that the current system is not working," Duffy said.

But Duffy has returned from a brief visit to Washington refreshed with new ammunition;

allies in the White House. Arne Duncan, Obama's secretary of education, is a strong supporter of mayoral control and he wants to visit Rochester, Duffy said. And Duffy met with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino who told Duffy that mayoral control was "the best decision he ever made."

And he dropped a little bomb, saying that one of the Rochester school district's former superintendents strongly advised Duffy to make it happen. Duffy would not say who that superintendent was, but it's unlikely that it was Clifford Janey or Manny Rivera.

Duffy insists his friends in high places won't provide him with much help because of NYSUT. The union's size and power can make New York politicians think twice about taking bold action.

Duffy says that his instincts tell him that the unions were behind a last-minute decision to strip the clause out of the Maintenance of Effort bill that would have allowed him to appoint two members to the School Board.

Still stinging from the tumultuous meeting between the School Board and City Hall that turned into a contentious argument about mayoral control, Duffy said that meeting was set up by the unions, with cooperation from some school board members, to embarrass him.

"My instincts about these things are hardly ever wrong," he said.

Duffy never responded to board Vice President Van Henri White's written invitation to appoint City Hall members to some School Board committees because, Duffy says, "it was a tiger with no teeth."

Duffy's indecisiveness about mayoral control has worked to his advantage, even with an election looming.

His instincts may be telling him that if he waits long enough, the public will side with him.