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After 12 years of his disastrous education policies, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will leave office on Dec. 31. Obsessed with his “legacy,” he instead leaves behind him a school system in disarray and a city divided between the haves and have-nots.

But we now have a chance to reverse the damage he has done. With your help, we have elected a progressive champion as our next mayor. When Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio takes office on Jan. 1, we will once again have a friend in City Hall and will begin our work to bring the tale of two cities to a close.

It will take years, but now is not the time to rest on our laurels. There are tremendous forces gathering to oppose us and our new mayor. If he is to succeed at bringing the change he has promised, de Blasio will need a strong and mobilized community behind him.

Our role in this fight is to continue to push for a city in which teachers are respected and supported, students receive the services and programs they need and the Department of Education once again supports our schools.

In order to begin moving toward these goals, we must do two things: restructure the DOE and revise the teacher evaluation system.

For too long the DOE has focused on tests and test prep at the expense of real teaching and learning. It has graded and closed schools rather than providing them with the support that they need to succeed. And it has shut out parents from the decisions that affect their children.

We envision a DOE that emphasizes providing support for teachers, students and schools so that they can reach their potential rather than penalizing them when they fall short. Struggling schools should receive extra support from a revived Office of Teaching and Learning responsible for designing curricula, offering professional development and implementing programs to turn schools around. And the DOE’s accountability and legal divisions, which monopolize too many resources for no real gain, should be pared back.

We also need a better support system at the school level. The current system of networks should be replaced with a modified system of school districts run by re-empowered superintendents responsible for providing instructional and other support to schools. Borough-based Integrated Service Centers should also be revived as hubs for schools to receive back-end support.

We are not proposing a cookie-cutter approach. Different schools require different supports; a revived district system will not work for all schools. Some schools such as those in the New York Performance Standards Consortiums, which are exempted from administering state tests, should belong to separate support organizations tailored to their needs. These schools would receive support through this separate channel but would still work with their district superintendent on all other matters. The decision to opt out of the standard district system should be left to School Leadership Teams.

Parents should be re-empowered by restoring more authority to Community Education Councils. School co-locations have run rampant under Mayor Bloomberg, and in many cases the schools moving into buildings have sucked resources away from their host schools. The CECs have often opposed these co-locations but have had no way of stopping them. They should be granted veto power over any new co-locations in their districts.

Finally, the teacher evaluation system must be revised. The purpose of teacher evaluations is to support our growth and development as educators, not penalize us as we do the hard work of educating our city’s children. Changing the evaluation system will not happen overnight, but we intend to renegotiate its terms in our next contract.

Principals and teachers agree: The current system is too complicated. We will work to simplify it by forcing the DOE to use the Danielson Framework for Teaching as it was meant to be used. We will also work to move toward a system that emphasizes student work and portfolios over test scores. And we will make sure that teachers are evaluated based on the gains made by the students in their classrooms — even in subject areas for which there are no state tests.

We also must fight to reduce the outrageous amount of paperwork we are forced to complete, which takes up valuable time we could be spending preparing lessons and helping our students.

The process needed to win these changes will take time, but we must fight for them. By improving our working conditions, we will also improve our students’ learning conditions. And now, with a new administration coming into office, this is our moment.

We have the chance of a lifetime: to rebuild our school system and make it the best school system in the country, for ourselves and for our students. It won’t be easy, but with your support and hard work we will realize our vision for New York City’s schools and students.

As always, I thank you for all that you do for our schools, students and city.