NEW YORK – New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is a very good friend indeed.

During this campaign for mayor he received a lot of assistance from the city’s teachers union. Now he’s busy repaying the favor by implementing the union’s self-serving political agenda.

The top priority is cracking down on the teacher union’s main competition – the city’s charter schools, the Associated Press reports.

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Publicly funded, privately managed charter schools were a key component to former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education reform strategy for the city, and it was working like gangbusters. The city’s charter schools increased from 17 to 183 during Bloomberg’s tenure, and those schools have made a substantial impact on improving student learning in the Big Apple.

The city’s charter schools have also decreased demand for unionized, dues playing public school teachers, a fact which has promoted the United Federation of Teachers union to fight bitterly to slow their growth.

They found a way to do just that, due to the lack of available classroom space in the city.

The charter schools rely heavily on using space in underutilized public school buildings, a practice that was encouraged by the Bloomberg administration. But de Blasio had declared war on the practice, just like his union puppet masters want him to do.

Most recently, de Blasio’s administration reversed three previously approved charter co-locations in the city. The three schools were set to open in the fall and were in the process of hiring teachers and enrolling about 600 students, the news service reports.

“Explaining to students and families that they won’t have a school next year is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve done at Success Academies,” former city councilmember Eva Moskowitz, founder of the three Success Academy Charter Schools rejected for co-locations, told the AP. “No parent should have to go through this.”

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De Blasio also wants to halt any new co-locations, and pledged to have meetings with neighborhood groups and parents before making future decisions. UFT teachers would no doubt flood those meetings in opposition, which the mayor surely realizes.

The de Blasio administration’s most recent rejection of co-locations for Success Academies sends a clear message that the teachers union is back in charge of education. The mayor doesn’t care about the 600 families who just got shafted by city officials. He’s more concerned about doing right by his Big Labor buddies.

After years of improvement under Bloomberg, education reform in New York City likely will now grind to a screeching halt, along with the academic progress of the city’s students.

But, what the heck, the union will be happy. And to the puppet mayor that’s all that matters.