As budget negotiations were going down to the wire in Albany, some 5,000 parents, teachers and students from across the state converged outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s midtown Manhattan office. Their March 28 rally marked the culmination of a months-long campaign to stop him from pushing through radical changes to public education favored by his Wall Street backers.

“Two months ago the man who has an office right here declared war on all of us,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the crowd, which stretched for blocks down Third Avenue from 41st Street. “Did we lie down? No. We went back at him.”

Cuomo was threatening to tie $1.1 billion in desperately needed new education aid to approval of his education proposals.

UFT Director of Parent and Community

Outreach Anthony Harmon, who shared responsibilities as the rally’s master of ceremonies with parent leader Noah Gotbaum, expressed the collective outrage of school communities at the governor’s political games.

“Today we’re here to send a message to the governor: Fund our schools!” Harmon said.

The protesters also lambasted the governor for his insistence that state test scores should account for 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. The crowd was dotted with both youngsters and teachers holding signs proclaiming that they were more than a test score.

Gotbaum, who has three children at Manhattan’s MS 243, accused Cuomo of sacrificing children’s best interests in his drive to push high-stakes testing.

“He’s turning our classrooms into testing mills and our teachers into test proctors,” Gotbaum said.

Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout, who got more than a third of the vote in last year’s Democratic primary for governor, said Cuomo’s proposals, taken together, amounted to an attack on democracy itself.

“Public education is the heart and soul of democracy,” Teachout said. “Public schools are the infrastructure of democracy.”

Cuomo is a “henchman” for a small group of hedge-funders, she said.

Echoing the #InviteCuomo social media campaign highlighting that Cuomo almost never sets foot in a public school, Daniel Dromm, a former public school teacher and now the chair of the City Council’s Education Committee, said, “The governor should visit schools if he wants to be involved in education.”

Lori Marder, a 3rd-grade teacher at PS 173 in Fresh Meadows, Queens, said she objected to Cuomo’s “my-way-or-the-highway” tactics.

“It’s a bully mentality,” Marder said. “He’s not coming to the table with an open mind. He wants it all — and that’s being a bully.”

For Brooklyn parent Derrick Royal, it’s simple: Cuomo is “against the people.”

“I want to stop him from closing down public schools and bringing in charters,” Royal said. “All kids have to learn.”

The rally was sponsored by more than 30 organizations, many of them parent-led, and featured a host of other speakers from labor, clergy, parent, student and community groups.