They’re the teachers’ pet$.
The city and state teachers unions have pumped more than $250,000 into the campaign coffers of politicians fighting school reform, The Post has learned.
Those 46 elected officials and candidates back New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, a coalition that includes the United Federation of Teachers and a half-dozen other unions.
The pols signed a pledge for NY-GPS promising not to accept contributions from StudentsFirst, a rival education advocacy group that supports charter schools and stricter teacher accountability by upending tenure and implementing more rigorous evaluations, as well as merit pay.
The unions have fought or resisted these policies.
The teachers unions aren’t the only labor muscle behind NY-GPS.
The coalition also includes the Working Families Party, the SEIU 1199 East hospital workers union, the Transport Workers Union, the Communication Workers of America and the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union.
Other members include the NAACP and the left-leaning Citizens Action and the Coalition for Educational Justice.
NY-GPS insisted it’s not a puppet of the teachers unions.
“We operate separately from the teachers unions. Our growing campaign is driven by thousands of parents, teachers, students, clergy and community leaders,” said Ocynthia Williams, an NY-GPS parent leader and spokeswoman.
“We have such broad support from elected officials and electoral candidates because they recognize that StudentsFirst is pushing a harmful agenda,” she claimed.
NY-GPS organizers said they created the coalition as a counter to StudentsFirst and to influence education agenda in the 2013 mayoral race.
It complains that its rival group is backed by wealthy hedge-funders.
The group has made clear it wants to roll back or stop the changes implemented by Mayor Bloomberg.
“The Bloomberg education agenda is not working for our students,” NY-GPS says in its mission statement.
“New Yorkers for Great Public Schools refuses to let our schools be bought and sold. We will not let the failed Bloomberg education policies have a fourth term. The mayoral election in 2013 will be a referendum on the failures of the Bloomberg education experiment.”
StudentsFirst is headed by former Washington, DC, schools chief Michelle Rhee. Its board members include former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who now works for News Corp., which publishes The Post; as well as Eva Moskowitz, who oversees Success Charter Schools.
Micah Lasher, former legislative director to Bloomberg, heads StudentFirst’s New York chapter.
City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, a mayoral candidate, did not sign the pledge, but said he would not take donations from StudentsFirst members.