The president of the United Federation of Teachers is expected to tell her members next week that contract negotiations with the city are all but dead.

The formal announcement will probably come during a December 1 assembly of schoolteachers. No last minute reprieve is likely, because the two sides have no plans to talk between now and then.

“Most deals fall apart before they come back together, and sometimes they fall apart and never come back together,” one union observer told The New York Sun.

Ms. Weingarten’s decision comes after a promise she made to the Delegate Assembly, a body of teachers representing all the city’s schools, that she would present an outline for a new contract deal on December 1.

Officials close to the discussions said she has nothing to present and will instead ask members to mull other options, including asking the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to step in to start fact-finding proceedings. The teachers have been working without a contract since May 31, 2003.

Mayor Bloomberg and Ms. Weingarten have been at cross-purposes on the contract for more than a year. The mayor wants teachers to provide some productivity enhancements in exchange for a raise. Ms. Weingarten has said the teachers are stretched too thin as it is.

The teachers have said they deserve a better deal than the one Mr. Bloomberg has offered, which is essentially the same as the contract forged with a major union of city workers, District Council 37. The DC-37 workers gave up compensation time and some vacation days to get more money.

The UFT and the city had been counting on an infusion of new money from the state to get them at least partway toward a compromise. A court has ordered the state to give the city more money to educate its public-school children, but just how much more money the city will receive is still the subject of debate. A council of special masters is supposed to make a recommendation on November 30.

For anyone following the contract talks, the most recent breakdown comes as a surprise. In August, Mr. Bloomberg said publicly that he thought he would have a contract agreement by the beginning of the school year. And in late October, reporters were writing about the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the mayor and Ms. Weingarten, after the two sat together in the mayor’s box during the first game of the Yankees’ American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox.

That set off speculation that there was a thaw in the contentious contract negotiations. Officials on both sides did little to tamp down expectations. City and union aides said the negotiations had grown friendlier and more productive. While they never said a contract was imminent, they did say that the tenor of the talks had changed.

The city had taken the short, eight page contract that enraged the union off the table and, in the words of one union official, “they were at least arguing about the same things – so that is progress.”

While it is unclear exactly where the breaking point came, what is clear is that city officials grew less amenable in the discussions when critics began grumbling that Mr. Bloomberg, who hopes to win reelection next November, was buckling under pressure and would not reform the work rules in the teachers contract. The schools chancellor, Joel Klein, said the work rules limited his ability to manage the school system.

The head of the City Council’s Committee on Education, Eva Moskowitz, hand-delivered to the mayor a letter last month in which she worried that he was prepared to back down on a roster of education reforms to make peace with the teachers union. She called on the mayor to hold the union’s feet to the fire on onerous “work rules,” including the use of longevity as the sole criterion for teacher assignment and the maintenance of obstacles to the firing of incompetent teachers.

Much to Mr. Bloomberg’s chagrin, Ms. Moskowitz immediately made the letter public, prompting a barrage of stories and editorials chastising the mayor for backing down from his campaign promise to achieve fundamental reform in the city’s schools.

The mayor accused Ms. Moskowitz of grandstanding and the council speaker, her longtime ally Gifford Miller, said her letter was unfortunate, coming as it did with the negotiations at a delicate stage.

“I would say what I have repeatedly said. Teachers need better pay and we need to improve working conditions, but the time for tweaking is past,” Ms. Moskowitz said this week in an interview. “The thinness or the thickness of the contract isn’t important, what is important is if it supports learning and teaching.”

One official with knowledge of the talks, and the recent breakdown, said the pressure from Ms. Moskowitz and the unfavorable press coverage of the work rules had caused city negotiators to dig in. The talks went off the rails from there. “Eva muddied the waters,” the official said.

This isn’t the first time the contract negotiations have flat lined. This time last year, the teachers union declared talks dead and demanded the state force the schools chancellor to bargain in good faith. The UFT told the employee-relations board that the chancellor was “poisoning negotiations” and was refusing to bargain in good faith. It is common for the union to call on the state board when contract talks reach a stalemate.

Once the UFT declares an impasse, the state board looks into the matter to determine whether an impasse actually exists. If it decides that there is one, the board appoints a mediator to work with the two parties to reach an agreement.

If that doesn’t work, the board appoints a three-member fact-finding panel, which assesses the situation and makes recommendations. The results of the panel are not binding on teachers as they are for firefighters and police unions. If the fact-finding panel fails to work out the differences, the union can turn to the courts. Administration officials declined to talk on the record about the negotiations.

The last time the state board got involved in a fight between the UFT and the city was in 2002. At that time, the fact-finding panel made recommendations that ended the battle between the mayor and the union.

Ms. Moskowitz said this isn’t the end of negotiations. “I think it is in everyone’s interest to come up with something that works,” she said. “I don’t think this is the end of the line, but this, certainly, is a serious bump in the road.”