The head of the teachers union flunked Schools Chancellor Harold Levy’s office yesterday for botched planning that has left hundreds of international teaching recruits with a housing crisis.

The 700 foreign teachers arrived here this month to help the Board of Education cope with a shortage of trained staff. But now many of them are still scrambling to find housing and avoid becoming homeless – a week before school starts.

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said the board “failed miserably” in helping the recruits find apartments in high-cost New York after providing two weeks of free housing at local hotels.

“They just haven’t been helped. It’s really a shame. The Board of Education should have known about this,” Weingarten said of the housing problem, first reported in Sunday’s Post.

The board hired consultant Cathe LeBlanc, a residential broker and Corcoran Group director, to work on housing issues a year ago.

But Levy’s office insisted it has a handle on the housing crunch.

“We’re pleased we’ve been able to be flexible and move quickly to solve the problem,” said spokeswoman Catie Marshall.

At the board’s urging, city brokers and property owners are now rallying to help avert a housing crisis.

“It’s not just apartments,” said Ivan Goodstein, whose firm, The Goodstein Organization, was hired by the board last Thursday to provide ongoing real-estate services. “The teachers have to have furniture and phone service and electricity.”

Brokers from Goodstein and other firms worked all weekend to place some of the newly hired foreign teachers in temporary rooms in a Westchester hotel after their free, two-week city hotel- and dorm-room stays are up.

Fairfield, N.J.-based Prime Hospitality, which owns 200 hotels, is allowing teachers to stay at its Ramada Inns in Elmsford, Secaucus and Clifton for reduced rates of $30 a night – but there have only been nine takers, a Board of Ed official said.

Goodstein has also come up with 30 to 40 houses available through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The UFT, through its hot line, also is urging current teachers to temporarily take in some recruits.

Meanwhile, Goodstein is reaching out to the real-estate industry to put in place permanent housing.

Under normal circumstance, to rent an apartment for $1,500, the teachers would need a guarantor who makes at least $150,000. The teachers would also have to put down one month security, the first month’s rent and, in many cases, pay a broker’s fee.