Metro

Mike bares UFT’s $1B blow to city

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ALBANY — A sham teacher-evaluation process that rewarded union foot-dragging will cost the city more than a billion dollars in school aid and 2,500 teachers, Mayor Bloomberg charged in explosive testimony to state lawmakers yesterday.

Bloomberg blasted state education regulators for approving “joke” one-year teacher-evaluation plans ensuring virtually every other school district in New York a 4 percent state-aid increase although the law requires two years before teachers are evaluated.

The city lost out on its $250 million school-aid increase because Bloomberg and the United Federation of Teachers couldn’t agree on a plan before a Jan. 17 deadline set by Gov. Cuomo.

The Big Apple would blow another $224 million if it fails again by Sept. 1 under Cuomo’s proposed 2013-14 state budget.

Bloomberg said the loss of aid means reducing the teaching staff by 700 this year and another 1,800 next year through attrition.

Testifying on a governor’s budget proposal for the final time as mayor, Bloomberg defiantly declared that he stood on principle in refusing to accede to a “sham” plan.

“We’d be better off finding a way without the money from the state and not compromising on an evaluation system that was a fraud,” he said.

Noting New York is the only state to condition aid on evaluation plans, he asked legislators to scrap the requirement.

He warned that the denial of aid would lower the “baseline” that determines the level of future school aid increases — costing the city untold billions.

“What this means is that one labor-union president, with one act of intransigence, supported by the state Education Department, would permanently undermine state funding for our schools,” he charged. “The teachers union does not suffer — at all. It’s our kids that suffer, and it’s the taxpayers of the city that have to come up with the money.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew called Bloomberg’s comments “embarrassing” and untrue.

And city Comptroller John Liu accused the mayor of wanting it “both ways” by resisting an evaluation plan but still seeking aid.

Assembly Education Committee Chairperson Cathy Nolan (D-Queens) — in a sharp exchange with the mayor — lamented that city kids “are going to be punished because the adults couldn’t work it out.”

Promising to ask the UFT the same question, the union ally said, “How can you not accept some responsibility . . . for this disaster?”

“You guys wrote the law,” Bloomberg replied.

State Education Commissioner John King wouldn’t respond to Bloomberg’s accusations.

Along with cutbacks in the number of teachers, Bloomberg said the city would cut more than 700,000 hours of after-school programs and $67 million for “essential” school supplies.

This would be, he said, in addition to cuts in the use of substitute teachers, teachers’ aides, after-school homework assistance and test preparation for students, and “professional development” for teachers and staff, Bloomberg said.