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We began the school year in September under an administration determined to destroy our union and our schools; a confusing and cumbersome evaluation system; and an expired contract.

Less than a year later, we have helped elect a new mayor, signed a new contract and survived our first and only year under the “new” evaluation system we inherited from the Bloomberg years, which come September will be replaced with a far better system.

We expended a lot of energy — and relied heavily on your involvement — these last several years fighting against Mayor Bloomberg and his mistaken policies. Now we’ll be able to channel that energy into thinking creatively about how we can improve our school system.

The new challenge ahead of us is very simple. We must show the public that school communities are the best drivers for making educational changes. The answers to the problems our schools face are already inside the schools. If parents, teachers and students are allowed to lead the way, they will uncover the answers — for the benefit of us all.

We are in a very good position here in New York City. Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Fariña agree with us that school communities know what is best for their schools and are working with us — through implementation of our contract and other means — to empower educators and parents. We now have the opportunity for the first time since the early 1990s to devote our energy almost exclusively to improving our schools rather than to defending them from attacks.

But events around the rest of the country must temper our optimism with a degree of caution. Teachers, teachers unions and public schools — the notion of public education itself — remain under assault nationally. The “education reformers” who want to destroy our union and privatize our schools may be in retreat here in New York City, but they are not defeated.

Just look at what has happened in California.

Earlier in June, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge stripped California’s teachers of their tenure and seniority protections on the grounds that these fundamental protections violate students’ rights to an equal education. [See page 16.] Never mind that their schools’ principals are responsible for determining whether teachers are effective and can deny tenure to those they deem ineffective — the judge still felt that judicial intervention was warranted. The decision will be appealed.

It’s more of the same teacher-bashing nonsense we’ve had to combat for years — but that doesn’t make it any less alarming. Already there is talk of similar suits springing up in states across the country, possibly including New York.

Due-process rights protect teachers from favoritism and persecution by hostile administrators, but eliminating these rights isn’t just bad for teachers. It hurts students, too. The same rules that the “reformers” claim protect “bad” teachers also allow our very best teachers to take the creative risks that enhance teaching and learning.

But the worst consequence of the judge’s ruling is that it distracts from the real issue: poverty. It is poverty — not tenure or seniority or “bad” teachers — that is the primary barrier to educational equity. Obscuring that central fact does a tremendous disservice to our students and our entire society. Instead, we should be struggling to shed light on it.

The fight in California is just another local manifestation of the continuing national fight over the fate of public education. The very same anti-teacher, anti-union billionaires who funded the court case in California are also active right here in New York City and across the state, bankrolling charter schools and voucher schemes and all the other attacks on our schools we’ve been fighting against for years.

However bright our prospects may look today — and they do look bright — we cannot forgot that those who would hurt our school communities are alive and well. Our task now is to work with Mayor de Blasio to model for the public how a high-functioning public school system should run and to stop those who are just trying to privatize and profit from schools.