Obama campaign spokesman Nick Shaprio told the DN's Michael Saul that Klein and Sharpton indeed met with members of the candidate's policy team - not Obama himself - but no deals were struck.

"Today Senator Obama's staff met with Chancellor Klein and Reverend Sharpton - as they have met with a large number of education thinkers - to discuss their new Education Equality Project and to hear their ideas on improving schools to meet the pressing demands of the 21st Century," Shapiro said.

Education Department spokesman David Cantor said Klein and Sharpton are trying to get the presidential candidates to "put education squarely in the middle of the domestic agenda." He said the duo had previously met with John McCain.

"It's entirely non-partisan," Cantor said. "What we want to impress upon the candidates is that any discussion of what this country is going to be has to have education at the center, and we've tried to impress upon them the urgency of the problem and the inability of the solutions we've using for the last half-century to solve the problem."

Oddly, this get-together coincided with another New York education-related happening in Chicago.

UFT President Randi Weingarten was formally elected to head the AFT at the national teachers union's 2008 convention in the Windy City.