From news service reports

NEW YORK – Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been tough with New York City and has been insisting the city implements a meaningful teacher eavluation system.

MORE NEWS: From Classroom to Consulate Chef: Culinary Student Lands Dream Job at U.S. Embassy in Paris

So tough, he’s withholding $240 million in state aid until it gets the job done.

Via Newsday:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says that if New York City and the United Federation of Teachers don’t wind down their extreme warfare soon and hammer out a deal on a teacher evaluation plan, the state will impose one.

The good news: Cuomo’s ultimatum gives the city a chance to salvage about $237 million in state school aid that’s at risk in the standoff.

The bad news: More than $250 million in  school grants that the city has already lost because of its noisy impasse with the UFT will stay lost.

The worst potential news: The UFT and the city end up signing off — under duress — on a toothless compromise that sells short the interests of the city’s 1.1 million pupils but saves face for Cuomo’s plan. Or this: The UFT refuses to bargain with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at all in hopes of dealing with a more pliant mayor in 2014.

Bloomberg must stand his ground. The nation’s largest public school system — with 75,000 teachers — deserves an evaluation system that’s firm, fair and binding. What the city does not need is an evaluation system that expires before teachers rated as ineffective can be dismissed. Bloomberg correctly calls that scenario a “fraud.” But it happens to be what the UFT wants.