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Almost immediately after UFT President Michael Mulgrew finished ripping Mayor Bloomberg’s characterization of how talks broke down between the two sides this morning, he informed members that there might still be a chance.

“Now they want to talk,” Mulgrew told members at a Delegate Assembly meeting after being handed a sheet of paper, according to several teachers who attended.

In addition to $250 million that’s on the line if a midnight deadline passes, no evaluation plan would also be a black eye for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who devised the law to withhold state funding from districts that failed to submit plans.  Earlier this month, he declared the law succeeded, touting the fact that 99 percent of districts had submitted plans.

But New York City and its 1.1 million students have remained a prominent outlier as the time wound down. Heading into this week, officials acknowledged that they were close to a deal in between lengthy negotiation meetings. This morning, the meetings broke down and both sides spent the afternoon dodging blame about who was responsible.

The slim possibility that a deal could get hammered out before its midnight deadline came just over an hour after Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Mulgrew said the chances were grim that there would be enough time.

“The time to get all the paperwork done is not there,” Mulgrew said at a press conference that took place less than an hour after he said in a statement that Bloomberg stood in the way of a deal.

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