Expel these teachers

It is insane for the New York City public school system to keep 1,200 unwanted teachers on the payroll, at a cost of more than $100 million annually. That group is made up of instructors who lost jobs when their positions were eliminated, who were rated unsatisfactory or who had disciplinary issues. They move around on make-work assignments while supposedly trying to find permanent jobs in the system — only no principals want many of them.

Now, the Daily News has reported, Chancellor Carmen Fariña and City Hall are looking for ways to drain this so-called Absent Teacher Reserve.

Mayor de Blasio seemed to indicate he would like to return many of the teachers to the classroom, saying, “if there were such a plan, it’s something I would approve.” Later, his press office said “the notion that we are going to force teachers on principals or schools is unequivocally false.”

The mayor must hold firm on that point. Otherwise, he would dump teachers of poor quality on unlucky students and schools, undermine the authority of principals to build their own staffs and give UFT President Michael Mulgrew an unwise and underserved benefit. This is all about the teachers contract. In 2005, after tough bargaining and a fact-finder’s report, then-Mayor Bloomberg and then-- UFT President Randi Weingarten reached a landmark contract settlement. The teachers got raises boosting salaries by 43%. Among Weingarten’s concessions in exchange for that: an end to automatic seniority hiring.

Until then, an instructor who got bounced from a job could go to another school and simply claim the position of a teacher with less seniority. A principal had no say in the matter, no authority to build a like-minded, cohesive team.

With the end of seniority rights, teachers had to compete for positions like any other job seekers. Many discovered they were unwanted in any of the city’s 1,300 schools. Many decided to just hang out and get paid. Later, the city and UFT agreed to use them in temporary assignments.

There was no way to be rid of them, because the fact-finder refused to set a time limit on how long a teacher could go jobless and still get paid. That, finally, is the solution to this huge waste.

The contract should specify that the school system can remove the walking dead from the payroll if they fail to land a new slot in six months or a year. Mulgrew would never approve without something huge in return. He’s already seeking more than $3 billion in back pay that de Blasio does not have.

While the mayor is in a tough spot, forcing these teachers out of the system — and not into the classroom — is the only way to go.