Starting next year, teachers will return to school two days earlier, work longer hours, and return to hallway and bathroom patrol in exchange for higher pay as part of a new contract deal ratified by the United Federation of Teachers last night.

Officials from both the union and the Bloomberg administration have heralded the deal as a victory, saying that it strikes a balance between changes to salaries and work rules – and will ultimately serve the city’s 1.1 million public school children.

In a vote much closer than expected, about 63% of the union’s members who cast ballots chose to accept the pact.

The president of the union, Randi Weingarten, said she hoped the new contract would improve relations between teachers and the Bloomberg administration.

“It is my hope that with this agreement, we can put the bitterness of the last few years behind us and work together to provide the highest quality education for our students,” Ms. Weingarten said in a written statement last night. “We are waiting to see if the chancellor will become a partner, and not an adversary.”

About 87% of the union’s eligible members submitted ballots over the past week. The official tally, counted by the American Arbitration Association, was 54,473 to 32,144. The union includes roughly 83,000 teachers and about 17,000 other school workers such as nurses and secretaries.

The retroactive contract calls for a 15% raise over 52 months. The new work rules will be phased in.

Starting in February, teachers will work an additional 37 and a half minutes, Monday through Thursday, to create a new after-school session for struggling students. Those classes will be held immediately after dismissal and capped at 10 students. The classes were created in part by 50 additional classroom minutes added to the work week in this new contract, in part by additional minutes added in the previous contract.

In September, teachers will report back to school two days earlier for professional development. They will also use Brooklyn-Queens Day – teachers in those boroughs previously had the day off – for an additional day of training.

Teachers interviewed by the Sun said they are not as upset about the additional time as what they say they have to “give back.” As part of the deal, they can once again be assigned to hallway patrol and cafeteria duty. Their ability to challenge negative evaluations will also be diminished under the terms of the new contract.

In a coup for newer teachers, educators will no longer be able to “bump” teachers with less seniority out of a coveted school slot.

“I’ve always believed that teachers deserve considerably higher pay and better working conditions, but arcane work rules that get in the way of teaching and learning need to be removed from the contract, and this goes a measure towards accomplishing that goal,” the chairwoman of the City Council’s Committee on Education, Eva Moskowitz, said.

The new pact is expected to cost the city $350 million more than it budgeted for the current fiscal year, increasing to $600 million and then to $750 million when it takes full effect in following years.

Because the contract is retroactive, teachers will also receive a sizeable check in December, ranging between $2,819 and $5,771, depending on seniority.

The new pact will expire on October 12, 2007. The teachers have been working without a contract for about two and a half years. Ms. Weingarten said the union will now focus on fighting for smaller class sizes and making pre-kindergarten available to all 4-year-olds.

Mayor Bloomberg said last night that he looked forward to working with the union.

“I am pleased that the UFT has ratified a new contract; it is good for teachers, the City, and most importantly, our school children,” he said in a statement. “The new contract gives teachers a substantial raise and enables the Department of Education to implement changes to further efforts to reform and improve the entire school system.”

Jeffrey Kaufman, a teacher at the Austin MacCormick Island Academy on Rikers Island who helped lead the charge against the contract, said he thought the close vote sent a strong message to the union. “We’re telling the leadership that they’re not leading the union properly. I think our message came out clearly, and I think it’s going to be a very difficult next couple of years,” he said.

Education historian Diane Ravitch said the contract will mean “52 months of labor peace,” but said she didn’t think it would have great implications for the classroom. “I think that in terms of reform everything depends on what comes out of Tweed and what kind of results they can show over time,” she said.