C. Virginia Fields became the final mayoral candidate to come out with an education plan.

Her Democratic competitors presented striking plans – Fernando Ferrer proposed a stock transfer tax that would raise what he considered to be the city’s portion of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity school financing lawsuit payment; Gifford Miller proposed reducing early grade class size to 17 students, and Anthony Weiner proposed a back-to-basics approach to instruction.

Ms. Fields’s plan is more sweeping. The amount it would cost and how it would be financed remain unknown.

The Manhattan borough president, who according to polls is fighting with Mr. Weiner and Mr. Miller for second place in the September 13 primary, said yesterday that as mayor she would focus on math and science education, as well as vocational education and mentoring.

“Our public schools can become a powerful engine for growth and job creation,” Ms. Fields said, standing in a classroom at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. “I envision creating a highly skilled work force, transforming potential dropouts into valuable employees, and graduating students with a head start into the most satisfying and promising careers.”

Ms. Fields also said she would pay teachers as much as their suburban counterparts earn, give teachers and principals more power, and extend the school day by a couple of hours at low-performing schools.

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An e-mail intended by the campaign of the Democratic mayoral front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, as a gag for City Hall reporters metastasized into a flap yesterday, when a former president of the Board of Education and former Ferrer intimate, Ninfa Segarra, denounced it and accused Mr. Ferrer of “cheap political attacks.”

On Monday the Ferrer campaign’s press secretary, Christy Setzer, sent to reporters a mock submission, purportedly written by Mayor Bloomberg, to the New York Post’s Summer Reading Essay Contest. The fake essay, “Mike’s Summer Adventure,” taunted the mayor for his attempts to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to New York City. The Bloomberg campaign dismissed the e-mail as “pathetic” and “embarrassing.”

Ms. Segarra, a Bloomberg campaign adviser, stepped up the criticism yesterday, saying the e-mail belittled the educational contest and accusing Mr. Ferrer of having nothing “constructive” to say about the educational “crises” he has bemoaned throughout his campaign.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Ferrer, Jennifer Bluestein, responded that he doesn’t think Mr. Bloomberg “shares the values of most New Yorkers” and that if Ms. Segarra thinks the Bloomberg administration has been successful, “then she and Freddy disagree.”