Almost every Assembly member from New York City received a visit in December from a delegation of UFT members, parents and community leaders as the union kicked off a new Fairness and Equity Campaign. The union’s message: We need public schools that serve all children.

The campaign was created to get the facts out in anticipation of what is shaping up to be a battle for the heart of public education when the next legislative session convenes on Jan. 7 in Albany. It comes in the wake of state elections that have emboldened proponents of charter schools.

“This is going to be one of the toughest legislative sessions,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew in a Dec. 16 meeting with eight newly elected state Assembly members. “There’s a lot of rhetoric being thrown around. We want education policies that are based on research and fact, not ideology.”

Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy, recently announced plans to open 100 charter schools in 10 years. She and other charter school proponents are lobbying vigorously for the state to lift the cap on the number of charter schools allowed to operate in the city.

Also on the state agenda again next year is a tax credit proposal to help private schools that would siphon off funds from public schools.

The UFT is seeking to maintain the charter cap, defeat the tax credit proposal, and ensure no additional facilities funding for city charter schools.

Mulgrew said the union is also seeking $2.2 billion in new state funding for public schools statewide, which the state was supposed to deliver as part of the 2007 settlement of a landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that charged that the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to provide children with a “sound, basic education.”

Richard Skibins, a health teacher and the chapter leader at PS 123 in Bushwick, said he was heartened by the meeting with his local Assembly member, Maritza Davila, on Dec. 11. “She was very knowledgeable about the issues,” Skibins said. “She’s from the community and has seen firsthand the inequities of funding.”

Skibins said he was motivated to participate in the campaign because of the inequities that he, too, has observed. “It’s not a level playing field,” he said. “Charter schools choose the students they want, and they pressure parents to remove low-performing students.”

Attending the same meeting was Jackson Farrell, a social studies teacher and chapter leader at IS 347 in Bushwick, who said he liked what he heard from Assembly member Davila. “She said she didn’t want any more charters in our district; she was very strong about it,” said Farrell.

But that commitment comes too late for IS 347, Farrell said.

“Eva Moskowitz is bragging about bringing in more charter schools, and one is coming to our building in the fall,” he said. “We never got a science lab that we were promised. We have a library but no librarian, and we have large class sizes. It’s not going to be good.”