By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg leaves office at the end of the year, the city’s teachers union wants to make sure it never sees his kind again.

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Early in his 12-year tenure, Bloomberg dismantled the New York City schools’ board of education and instituted a system in which school leaders are directly accountable to the mayor.

Bloomberg went on to use his considerable mayoral powers to force a number of reforms upon the city’s education system, such as closing failing schools and allowing charter schools to share building space with government schools.

As a result, the United Federation of Teachers, the local teachers union, has watched its influence over the city’s schools dwindle. Union leaders hope to reverse that trend.

On Thursday, the UFT “revealed a plan to gut mayoral control over the public school system – a move that critics blasted as a blatant power grab,” reports the New York Post.

The union wants to reduce the number of members New York City’s next mayor can appoint to the Panel for Educational Policy, the body that replaced the traditional school board.

“The mayor currently selects eight of the 13 members – giving City Hall iron-clad control over school policy,” the Post reports.

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By reducing the number of mayoral appointments to five, the UFT figures it can have more “influence” over the board’s other eight members.

The New York Post reports that the mayoral control law doesn’t expire until June 2015. That gives the union plenty of time to wage a public relations campaign in favor of the switch.

Regardless, the UFT’s influence over New York schools is expected to be on the upswing beginning next year. It’s been widely reported that most of the candidates who hope to succeed Bloomberg as mayor have been courting UFT President Michael Mulgrew for his endorsement.

Since the union should be shaping school policies long before 2015, the UFT’s proposed power grab should be viewed as an insurance policy, in the off chance that the next mayor ever forgets who really runs New York’s public schools.

“The UFT used to run the school system and it’s no surprise they want to return to those days by watering down a key reform that raised accountability and took control away from the special interests,” said Bloomberg spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua, according to the Post.