Veto this bill

New York City public schools have lost more than 60,000 students over the last two years. In a sane world, fewer kids might mean (gasp!) fewer teachers to teach them. The tail end of a pandemic, when everyone and his brother is talking up the urgent need to support children, this also might be a wise time for schools to invest in guidance counselors, social workers and extracurriculars.

Not if the Legislature gets its way. The ink is now drying on a very bad bill that would tie the city’s hands, forcing it to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the singular purpose of driving down class sizes.

Education research is clear: Requiring fewer kids per class is an extraordinarily expensive proposition that pays dubious dividends. While it can be beneficial in the early grades, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the effects wane as kids age. In theory, parents want their kids in a small class with a great teacher — but if the choice is between a somewhat larger class with an excellent teacher and a smaller class with a teacher who just doesn’t cut it, they’ll choose the former.

That will soon become the choice. A United Federation of Teachers that’s been beating the drum about a catastrophic coming teaching shortage has just forced the hiring of tons of new educators from a pool they admit is shallow. They’re doing all this at a time when city public schools already spend more per pupil than anywhere in America — $28,000, and set to rise sharply even before the new mandate.

Nor are current class sizes out of control. Elementary schools average 21.6 kids per teacher; middle schools, 24.9; high schools, 25.1. The need for new, written-in-stone limits is weak indeed — except if you’re the teachers union.

Gov. Hochul will soon have on her desk reams of other bills praised by progressives to sign into law. For this faux-progressive legislation, she needs the guts to get out the veto pen.