#Council’s pricey gift to NY’s teachers-union boss: a mandate for members

It doesn’t get much more shameless, even in New York: The City Council is now trying to use the pandemic as an excuse to shore up the ranks of the teachers union.

A bill rolled out last month would raise the minimum space allowed per student, presumably to control the spread of COVID. Don’t buy it: It’s a backdoor way of lowering class size and boosting the need for more teachers.

The measure would mandate at least 35 square feet per child, up from 20 feet. That would shrink average classrooms to 14-21 students, depending on the size of the room. Classes are now capped at 34 students in high schools, 30 in middle schools and 32 for first- through sixth-graders.

“Class size is a public-health issue,” asserts Councilman Mark Treyger, one of the bill’s sponsors. Huh? What’s the health issue? After all, if stopping the spread of COVID is so important, why does the bill give schools until 2024 to comply — long after COVID is likely to be history?

Besides, kids have never been spreaders of the virus, so limiting class size may not be necessary even now. Plus, even kids under 12 may soon be eligible for a vaccine, the best way to stop the spread.

Even more preposterous, the bill would make the change permanent, as if the (imaginary) threat of kids spreading COVID will never disappear.

“There are many reasons to support smaller classes, and health concerns are the most immediate,” argues teachers-union boss Michael Mulgrew, who was surely biting his tongue at the time. Smaller classes would help reassure parents “that we have learned from this pandemic, that it is not business as usual.” 

Never let a good crisis go to waste, in other words.

Let’s face it: Mulgrew would love any step that would boost the need to hire more teachers who could . . . join his union — and pay dues. And what teacher wouldn’t want as few students (and as little work) as possible?

That’s why the union and its allies have argued for smaller classes for years. Yet New York already spends more than twice the national average per student on its public schools. Hiring more teachers could balloon that to three or four times the average — making the idea prohibitive.

Final note: Mulgrew’s union was one of the few labor groups to back Speaker Corey Johnson’s failed bid for comptroller this year. Johnson is one of the bill’s sponsors. Think of it as a thank-you gift — on the taxpayers’ dime.