Sleeping Watchdog

If ever a whistleblower complaint rang true, it’s the one charging the special commissioner of investigation for city schools with slacking off to protect Mayor de Blasio.

As The Post’s Susan Edelman reports, an explosive four-page letter signed “SCI Investigative Staff” says that Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman has blocked nine separate probes of wrongdoing allegedly involving City Hall and Department of Education higher-ups.

The Aug. 20 letter suggests the motive was to protect de Blasio’s presidential hopes, but the simple truth is that the mayor has been a protector of the school system’s vested interests from Day One.

And in Coleman he plainly has a “cop” who serves that agenda: In the last three years, the agency has investigated just 11 of the 880 allegations of academic fraud it received, and substantiated only one.

It kicked all the other charges back to the Department of Education — utterly ignoring the reason the city created the SCI office in the first place, namely to have an independent check on the education bureaucracy.

Over the last six years, The Post has uncovered all manner of grade- and test-fixing scams at various city schools, ample evidence that the top ranks of de Blasio’s DOE don’t care about systemic academic fraud.

Then-Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters tried to oust Coleman soon after she took over. He may have been exceeding his powers, but his judgment seems vindicated.

De Blasio got rid of Peters after DOI uncovered major problems at the Administration for Children’s Services, NYCHA and other mayoral agencies — and the DOI has since gone silent.

Now the DOI is (supposedly) investigating the whistleblower’s charges. Ha! The only hope for justice here is if federal prosecutors get on the job.