Meanwhile, UFT President Randi Weingarten isn't wasting the opportunity to blast Bloomberg over the CFE funding while also continuing the union's drumbeat that the mayor's policies insult and demoralize teachers. In fact, Weingarten announced this week that the union intends to open its own charter schools. Weingarten hopes that opening two new union-run charter schools in disadvantaged Brooklyn will create a "bottom-up thinking" environment that will be friendlier to teachers.

The funding for such schools is quite a mystery with the union claiming that it can staff two teachers in every K-3 grade and limit class sizes to 25, all by reducing some ambiguous line item termed "administrative spending." The leader of each school will not carry the title of principal to signal the kind of collaborative style the union expects of its school leadership. Asked whether the city's principals' union would represent that leader, Weingarten said that the question had generated "a really interesting conversation" within the UFT. In the end, she said, members decided that it would be the right thing to do.