Here’s How Hard It Is to Fire a Really, Really Bad Teacher
7th April 2012
A high school science teacher in the Bronx who had already been warned about touching female students brushed his lower body against one student’s leg during a lab exercise, coming so close that she told investigators she could feel his genitals through his pants.
That guy’s still in the classroom, as are a math teacher who harassed a female student via phone and text messages and a health teacher who simulated anal sex on one of his male students. In these and other cases, the Times reports, New York school officials’ efforts to fire such teachers were stymied by contractually-required arbitration that, while finding the teachers at fault, didn’t go so far as to fire them.
And why? Because it’s a government school
- Being a government school means being controlled through politics.
- Being controlled through politics means being subject to whoever has the most and loudest votes.
- Unions almost always have enough (and loud enough) votes to control the political process especially if Democrat are involved.
- In a large city, Democrats are always involved — after all, they invented the big city political machine.
April 7th, 2012 at 16:33
We shouldn’t insult the old-school political machines like Tammany Hall. They’d have canned teachers like this a long time ago. Their equation was simple: is this joker making more grief for us in the next election than it’s worth to keep them? Someone would have to be super well-connected to stay in a job if they outraged as badly as the examples you cite, and even if they were kept they’d be told in no uncertain terms to stop making hay for the machine’s opponents.
The old spoils system was better (i.e., it sucked less) in a lot of ways than the progressive civil service model. ‘Honest Graft’ is a place to start.
April 8th, 2012 at 16:28
I don’t understand why parents don’t press sexual assault charges against the teacher, and accessory charges against every official who knew and didn’t fire the guy.
If there’s one thing the last forty years has shown us, it’s that corporate bodies over-react to legal trouble.