After Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled his draconian education agenda, UFT President Michael Mulgrew moved quickly to call in parents, community leaders and the union’s own delegates to sound the alarm and solicit their ideas for how best to mount an effective challenge.

Timed to coincide with a special Delegate Assembly, Mulgrew held two emergency meetings with several hundred parents, high school students, clergy and community and civil rights leaders at UFT headquarters to strategize about how the union can work with them to beat back the governor’s proposals.

Mulgrew framed the issues for attendees at the Jan. 29 meetings, speaking about how Cuomo’s plans will hurt students and entire school communities, not just teachers.

“The governor of the state of New York put out a list of ideas that we have proof will fail our kids,” Mulgrew said.

Mulgrew also drew connections between the governor and ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with whom the union and its community allies fought bitterly over many of the same proposals and whose wealthy supporters Mulgrew said have now cast their lot with Cuomo.

“He’s trying to buy education for his friends who wanted to privatize it under Bloomberg,” Mulgrew said. “We didn’t let them then, and we won’t now.”

Student Markus Arthur, a junior at Talent Unlimited HS in Manhattan, spoke passionately about the poor conditions at his school that had driven him and his mother to attend one of the meetings. The school is deteriorating, he said, with broken elevators and not enough lockers. There aren’t enough books or other supplies either, Arthur said.

“We were reading ‘The Great Gatsby’ but my book was in pieces, literally in pieces,” Arthur said. “I think I was on chapter two when it just fell apart on the subway.”

For Jackson Heights parent Lavern Maison, whose 1st-grader attends PS 69, the issue that brought her out was overcrowding. The schools are so packed in her district that some students must attend class in trailers, said Maison, who is also a member of the District 30 Community Education Council.

“There shouldn’t be an increase in charters before we fix the problems we already have,” she said.

The parents shared their ideas, which included everything from meeting with community boards and asking Community Education Councils to pass resolutions condemning the governor’s proposals to a big rally in late March on a Saturday, when parents could attend, outside the governor’s Midtown office.

At the special Delegate Assembly, Mulgrew ran many of the parents’ ideas by the delegates and gathered more.

One idea from parents that Mulgrew floated to delegates and now is moving forward is for parents, teachers and children to join hands in front of or around their school to show unity in the face of the governor’s destructive proposals.

Every school is being asked to hold a hands-around-our-school event on March 12, the UFT’s citywide day of action.

The message will be clear, Mulgrew said: “Gov. Cuomo, get away. You’re not going to hurt us.”