The Post’s eye-popping series of stories last week on bad-actor teachers is attracting some official attention: A key state lawmaker is zeroing in on the matter.
That’s great.
But real reform won’t happen unless Gov. Cuomo himself leads the charge. He’s got no time to lose.
Indeed, as matters stand, the problems are on track to get worse. And that’s saying something: The numerous alarming cases cited in The Post’s series make it painfully clear that too many teachers who shouldn’t be near a blackboard are stuck on the payroll for years — and sometimes even returned to the classroom — thanks largely to state laws in desperate need of reform.
Staten Island elementary-school teacher Kim DePrima was allowed back even after a criminal conviction for allowing her pit bulls to maul a 90-year-old neighbor to death in 2008.
Special-ed teacher Monique Wallace stole nearly $40,000 by lying on an application for housing subsidies — yet now earns $63,000 a year teaching at Brooklyn’s SEEALL Academy.
When city officials do manage to fire someone, it can take years, even when the evidence is compelling: Second-grade teacher Amy Woda, for example, was repeatedly deemed incompetent and failed to improve after numerous chances. Yet it took four years — and $200,000 for her salary — before she could be let go.
“The circumstances outlined in The Post are fairly egregious,” says state Senate Education Committee Chairman John Flanagan, who’s vowing a probe.
But given the power of the teachers unions, which insist on all the law’s ridiculous delays and teacher protections, don’t expect any major change — unless Cuomo makes it a priority.
And there’s no reason for him not to.
After all, he says he wants to transform New York, that government should put “people first and not the special interests” — that performance in the schools matters.
Well, if he means that, he’ll push hard to fix the laws — starting, perhaps, with those that govern hearings and requirements for firing bad teachers.
Here’s the problem: Under these laws, the city must compile mountains of evidence, which takes enormous time and resources. And arbitrators, co-chosen by the union, can assert that teachers have a right to be “rehabilitated” — sometimes ad infinitum — at taxpayer expense.
All this has to change.
Last year, Albany passed legislation paving the way for a new “teacher evaluation” process, which Cuomo backs. But the new system might actually drag out terminations even longer, by granting teachers a whole new layer of appeals.
Meanwhile, in proposing rules for the new process, the state Board of Regents (whose members owe their own jobs to labor-bought Democrats) failed to set limits on these new appeals, leaving it instead to local districts to negotiate with . . . unions.
No coincidence there, of course.
True, Cuomo doesn’t control the Regents — or even the state Education Department, which answers to them and drafts rules on their behalf. Nor will winning over pro-union lawmakers be easy.
So far, Cuomo has been speaking in a muted voice — and the proverbial big stick has been nowhere in sight.
Well, use it or lose it, they say.
What better time than right now?