Expect more perv teacher stories as NYC class-size mandate lowers hiring standards

What seems a recent avalanche of “perv teacher” news reminds us of another reason to repeal the state’s New-York-City-only smaller-class-sizes mandate: It all but guarantees more sickos in the classroom.A few of the recent stories: It’s an old, old story, as predators seek jobs that provide access to vulnerable, unsuspecting children — and as school systems across the country routinely let sickos go without a mark on their records because union rules and other teacher privileges make it so expensive to openly fire them for cause.Which brings us to the New York law imposed purely at the behest of the city teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers: Despite declining enrollment, it will force the city Department of Education to hire thousands of new teachers in coming years.The law doesn’t miraculously increase or improve the hiring pool, nor provide the city the resources to only poach great teachers from elsewhere, so it guarantees the DOE will have to bring in “educators” who wouldn’t otherwise pass the sniff test.That means a lot of bad teachers and at least a few dangerous ones.And, because seniority rules give established teachers first dibs on jobs at good schools, that the scrubs and sickos will mostly wind up at the most dysfunctional ones — which is also where it’s easiest to get away with abuse.

Look: New York City’s days of 35 or more kids in a classroom are long past; these days larger classes are most likely in the higher-achieving public schools.The state lawmakers who imposed the class-size law pretended they were doing good for the kids, but the mandate is really only a boon to the dues-hungry union and to “teachers” who should be out of the profession entirely — some of them, for the ugliest reasons of all....