The United Federation of Teachers is ringing in the new year with an artful lie of the first order: A TV ad campaign designed to convince New Yorkers that Mike Bloomberg, and not the union itself, is responsible for the imminent loss of $450 million in extra state school aid.
Albany budgeted the cash as a not-so-subtle bribe designed to get the UFT to agree to a teacher-evaluation system pegged in part to student performance.
But if the city can’t close the deal by Jan. 17, all that money disappears.
Hence the ad campaign — designed to paint Bloomberg as a bully while deflecting attention from the fact that no teacher is too stupid, lazy or incompetent for the UFT to protect.
Thus the union last month abandoned negotiations, turning up its nose at a quarter-billion dollars in state cash and another $200 million in state and federal grants.
Why? It’s looking for a cut of the kitty.
As The Post’s Yoav Gonen reported last week: “The teachers union has refused to sign . . . unless it gets a guarantee of wage increases in the next contract.”
The union wants pay hikes for its members — already the highest-paid in the nation, pulling in an average of $73,751 a year.
It doesn’t care about securing that funding for the million-plus kids in its hands.
Nor is it willing to approve teacher evaluations that would help reward high achievers and identify the worst performers.
Some 99 percent of the state’s 680 school districts have reached accords with their local unions — but the UFT is holding out.
It’s easy enough to chalk it all up to union boss Mike Mulgrew’s grubbing for dollars.
But in the long run, his refusal to negotiate is also a power grab — one he hopes will set the tone when Mayor Bloomberg leaves office and a new regime is in place.
The UFT lost substantial power in 2002 when Bloomberg won mayoral control of city schools, after decades in which the unions had near-absolute de facto power.
Everything the union does today should be understood in this light.
For Bloomberg has been unbending. “Nobody has a right to ruin our kids’ lives,” he said recently, insisting on a teacher-evaluations regime with teeth, one that guarantees only the best teachers are kept in the classroom.
No surprise then that Mulgrew is trying to step around the mayor — in part by grooming his replacement.
According to a published report, Mulgrew “invited” the top four Democratic candidates for mayor to join him in Cincinnati to study a school program there.
All four giddily snapped-to. They know how much clout Mulgrew has, how much they need his political backing — and they don’t intend to stand up to him.
But this isn’t about lunch money — $450 million is at stake, and every city agency is going to take a hit if it’s lost, as the mayor scrambles to plug the schools’ budget hole using cash from other agencies.
That’ll do real damage to the city.
But chances are, the deal is already dead.
And the city budget will be bled to feed a greedy union afraid of accountability.
And that’s how Mike Mulgrew wished New York a happy new year.