PUBLISHED: April 10, 2007 | By JULIE BOSMAN | New York Times

Trying to tamp down criticism of his management of the city school system, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg convened a group of “independent leaders” to stand behind him at a news conference yesterday as a show of support for his proposals.

“Despite our bringing a new season of hope to our public schools, sadly and incredibly, I think, there is a small chorus of people who are calling for a return to the good old days,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the Education Department headquarters. “We simply can’t go back to those days of failure, indifference and paralysis. The people standing behind me, to a person, understand that.”

While the mayor suggested that the gathering yesterday was evidence of a groundswell of support for his agenda, the group was composed of many people who also have business dealings with the school system, including two former Education Department officials, leaders of nonprofit organizations that are helping to run schools and high-profile donors who have given millions to support the mayor’s work.

Mr. Bloomberg has come under increasing attack from parent groups, community advocates, elected officials and union leaders, urging him to halt his plans to reorganize the school bureaucracy. These plans include eliminating the city’s 10 instructional regions and adopting a new school budgeting system.

At yesterday’s news conference, the mayor lobbed attacks at these adversaries, saying they were selfishly defending the status quo.

“You are either with the children, or you’re against them,” he said. Pushed to name his critics, the mayor singled out the teachers’ union.

“No. 1, there’s the U.F.T.,” Mr. Bloomberg said, referring to the United Federation of Teachers. “You want to go after somebody, that’s as good an example as anything. All they want to do is roll it back.”

Randi Weingarten, the union president, expressed surprise at the tenor of Mr. Bloomberg’s remarks.

“When the mayor sometimes is in a bad mood, he goes off in ways that he shouldn’t go off, but it’s not often that the mayor makes comments that are reminiscent of Giuliani-like comments,” she said in a telephone interview. “This may be a change of direction, because the mayor usually supports the teachers.”

The mayor’s aides distributed a letter of support signed by more than 70 people in attendance at the conference and about 30 who did not attend.

Among those standing behind Mr. Bloomberg were LaVerne Srinivasan, a former deputy schools chancellor and the president of New Leaders for New Schools, a principal-training program; Richard Stopol, executive director of New York City Outward Bound, which is a partner in several new small high schools created by the mayor; and Geoffrey Canada, chief executive of the Harlem Children’s Zone. Betsy Gotbaum, the public advocate, who has been among the mayor’s loudest critics, said in a statement, “Mayor Bloomberg is lashing out again because this third reorganization is running into a wall of opposition from people who count: students, teachers, administrators and parents.”

Ms. Weingarten said she planned to speak to Mr. Bloomberg in the next 24 hours about his remarks.

Does she expect an apology?

“I don’t even want to go there,” she said.