Abusive, criminal or just plain incompetent teachers can all rest easy: In this city, their jobs are perfectly safe.
And too bad for the kids in the schools.
That’s the bitter lesson from The Post’s reports this week about teachers who slap kids, booze it up in class, steal from the government or just can’t teach — but still manage to hang on to their jobs.
For that, thank the city’s stacked teachers-union rules, which make it incredibly hard to fire teachers, no matter how lousy.
Thank, especially, the “independent” arbitrators — who can be relied on to put teachers’ interests before the kids’.
Yesterday, Gov. Cuomo said the teacher-rating system he wants schools to adopt would help “remedy” the situation.
Yet, as it turns out, the city’s union — the United Federation of Teachers — is actually pushing to extend its current hold-harmless set-up: It wants teacher evaluations made by principals to be OK’d by these supposedly neutral arbitrators.
That, of course, won’t “remedy” anything — which is why the city has resisted.
Consider, after all, how the “arbitration” process works. For starters, both the union and the city have to agree on who can be an arbitrator; each side has veto power.
Once an arbitrator gets the job, he needs to make sure his decision won’t upset the union — that is, if he wants more work of this kind in the future.
Because union bosses, and their pals at sister unions across the state, won’t hesitate to make sure anyone seen as too tough on teachers never gets school arbitration work again, a city lawyer says.
Plus, the union can (and does) drag its feet in approving arbitrators — thus, limiting the number available to hear cases, and slowing the process.
No wonder they heard only 26 incompetence cases last year. No wonder they blocked the city’s attempts to boot the teachers in fully half of those cases.
Likewise, teachers got to keep their jobs in more than two-thirds of some 70 misconduct cases. And it gets worse from there.
“What happens is every single thing is litigated or grieved or had a fuss made about it,” Mayor Bloomberg says.
Bottom line? Teachers like Brian Bachisin, Erica Fairfull and Walter Brown, who were caught nipping at scotch in school, remained teachers.
Tonia Hemingway and Wendy Aponte actually pleaded guilty to defrauding the government to get housing subsidies, but similarly stayed on the payroll (though Aponte’s license was suspended for a year).
Meanwhile, talks between the city and the UFT on new teacher-evaluation rules have reportedly resumed. And Cuomo says unions and districts across the state must agree on plans within the next few weeks.
Let’s just hope any new rules won’t be rendered toothless by more pro-union arbitrators — or any other poison pills.