After taking some very pointed heat from this page over its procrastina tion, the state Education Department on Friday made public a 40-page set of proposed regulations establishing a new system to evaluate teacher performance.

The regs are what outgoing Commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch have come up with to short-circuit Mayor Bloomberg’s push to end seniority-based (Last in, first out) teacher layoffs.

(The city’s new schools chancellor, Dennis Walcott, last week reiterated the urgent need for repealing LIFO, citing urgent “budget issues” and the likelihood of 6,100 “layoffs on the table.”)

Whether the new SED regs will make LIFO “a moot point,” as Steiner and Tisch have proclaimed, is — to understate the case — arguable.

It’s also not clear just when they’ll be adopted — though the issue is on the agenda for the Regents’ mid-May meeting, “it is too soon to say whether the board will vote on them,” according to a a spokesman.

But one thing is clear — the SED isn’t remotely interested in public input.

The proposed regs were first posted to the department’s Web site Friday, soliciting written public comment by April 29 — after just two weeks.

And not just any two weeks, either: The public-comment period falls smack in the middle of the Passover/Easter holidays, when many folks are too preoccupied to digest 40 pages of turgid bureaucratese and craft a coherent response.

This timetable is tailor-made for the teachers unions, which want a meaningful evaluation system for their members buried in a very deep pit. (And rubbing salt into that wound is the fact that most teachers will be enjoying one of their innumerable vacations next week — unlike most taxpayers.)

Now, to be honest, government panels like the Board of Regents may ask for public comment (they’re required to by law), but that doesn’t mean such input will have any actual impact on what they wind up doing.

Still, it demonstrates SED’s arrogance and utter disregard for the public interest that this particular public-comment period has been scheduled in a way that actually hinders public comment.

Sad — but typical.