The last school year was good, but this year will be bigger and better – with 8 million new books, 5,000 new teachers, 91 new schools, and 12,000 seats – the schools chancellor said yesterday.

Five days before the start of the new school year, Chancellor Joel Klein told reporters about some of the biggest changes on deck and disclosed some of his hopes for the coming year.

He said in the coming weeks, the city would launch a new “apples to apples” accountability program to determine how much individual students are learning each year.

“We’re looking at individual students over time,” he said. “You can look at those at a school basis and say from third to fourth grade, these students gained X at this school, the same students gained Y at this school…By everyone’s analysis, this is the most powerful way to look at accountability.”

He said the city would also ramp up its professional-development and mentoring programs. The Department of Education has dedicated $36 million to its new mentoring program, which pairs master educators with new teachers.

He said interventions would start earlier this year than last year for struggling third-graders, and students who were held back under the new social promotion policy would be in regular classes but would get special services from the beginning of the year.

He said there would be 53 new small high schools this year and nine new charter schools. He predicted a “bonanza year” when it comes to increased number of charter schools seeking to open in New York City.

He said the city is also expanding its safety program, even though it is not calling dangerous schools “impact schools” as it did last year.

Senator Clinton announced yesterday the Department of Justice’s office of community-oriented policing services would give New York City $6.25 million to hire 50 school resource officers to work in the public schools.

A Clinton spokeswoman referred calls for comment to the Justice Department, where a spokesman was unavailable. A spokesman for the city education department said the program was under the Police Department’s jurisdiction, but a police spokesman said the new officers “are not police officers.”

Though Mr. Klein said he doesn’t like to make predictions, he said he hopes that the idea of merit-based and incentive-based pay catches on.

He also said he hopes the Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit will be resolved so the city can put more money into its public schools – particularly its early childhood program, its arts curriculum, and its physical-education program.

The chancellor also said he hopes voters would re-elect his boss, Mayor Bloomberg, in 2005, so the administration would have another term to make sure its education reforms take hold.

“I am mindful of the election, but only in the following sense: I want the city to know that we are turning this machine around, that it isn’t easy but that it is doable, but that if you change tactics, if you change administrations, if you change all the time, you’re not going to get the consistency and the leadership that you need,” he said.

“Can anyone really transform urban education in the United States and get the kind of results I think we all would like to see for these kids? We are on that path and I think we are going to succeed at that. But I’ve been candid from the beginning: that is a two-term job.”