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A month into her appointment as incoming schools chancellor and more than a week after getting state approval for the role, Cathie Black has yet to meet with the head of the powerful city teachers union, she told The Post yesterday.
Instead, Black has been busy visiting seven high-performing public schools in the past 10 days, meeting with principals union president Ernie Logan, and attending yesterday’s high-school football championship game at Yankee Stadium.
“I’ve got a million things going on at once. Right now, being in schools is really, really important for me,” Black told The Post editorial board yesterday when asked why there’s been no tete-a-tete yet with United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew.
“I’m trying to be out in the community to meet the electeds, but he’s obviously very important,” she added. “There will be things we differ on, I’m sure . . . but I would hope that we can have as positive a relationship as we possibly can.”
Black noted, however, that coming together on issues like teacher tenure, seniority-based layoffs and reforming teacher evaluations would be difficult — especially with looming budget cuts.
“There aren’t a lot of gives to give, so finding a common ground is not going to be easy, but I will work very hard toward that,” Black said. “The most important thing for me is to have the best teachers, so we have to work through these quite contentious issues between the UFT and the Department of Education.”
Mulgrew told The Post that Black had canceled their last scheduled meeting, and left the possibility of a get-together in her hands.
“If she wants to meet with me, we’ll meet. If she doesn’t want to, we won’t,” he said.
Black also signaled that she was cut from the same cloth as Mayor Bloomberg, who appointed her amid a veil of secrecy, and outgoing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.
“I think all of the reforms that our mayor and Joel have driven through the system with aggressiveness and braveness and boldness, I’m completely in support of,” she said.