Teacher Fired in New York!

As reader MikeAT said when he emailed this to me:  Pigs have flown! Hell Has Frozen Over! The Saints are in the Superbowl! And New York fired a teacher!

In New York City – as with so many other places around the country – it’s generally a sadly accepted assumption that once a teacher in the public school system achieves tenure, they are in place for life. It doesn’t matter if you turn out to be a pedophile, a sexual predator or violent madman, thanks to the power of the teachers unions, your taxpayer funded paycheck is pretty much safe for life. At most, you might be sent to sit in a rubber room. Heck, in the current case of Sean Shaynak, you can collect your pay while sitting in jail on charges of kidnapping and trading good grades in exchange for sex with children.

But if the reports are true, Public School 78 in the Bronx has broken the mold after a series of drawn out court proceedings and actually succeeded in firing Jason Roberts.

Go read what it took for him to get fired, which includes claims that he

spat on a student; hung up on the principal; told students they could attack another student and break his glasses; passed gas in students’ faces; threw a block of wood at a student, and shouted things like “bitch,” “white devil” and “suck a goat’s ass” when talking to students, parents and colleagues, according to court papers.

Still, it took three years.  And of course, his union defended him.  I'm not saying they shouldn't ensure his due process rights weren't observed, but they actually tried to allow him to keep his job.  Holy crap.