Extracurricular

Every once in awhile, I run into an odd news story that exposes a lot more than its pure oddness.

On Friday, two female, New York City school system language teachers were fired for getting drunk after school and disrobing in their apparent stupor . All this was done while some children were still present on school grounds and in school buildings (Click here to See Story: Teachers fired after in-school nudity).

While the story itself, might be bizarre enough, even stranger is the fact that the "incident" occurred back in November of 2009. It took the New York City school system a full 9 months to fire these offenders. I am also quite sure that they were fully paid while their cases were being so illogically deliberated on for all that time.

This just demonstrates the stranglehold the unions have on government operations. Even in what can only be described as a flagrant violation of decorum or what, I am quite sure, is an absolute violation of work rules, it still took months to fire these two. Even so, these two teachers still plan to appeal their firings.

This kind of thing isn't rare either. In the New York school system, alone, there are now over 700 teachers who are being paid to do nothing; rather than being fired for a variety of disciplinary reasons (Click here to See Story: New York Teachers Paid To Do Nothing: 700 Of Them). And, it's all because of the power of the unions.

This surely sends the wrong message to any unionized, government worker. It literally breeds contempt and complacency. Maybe that's why we've suffered such massive declines in the effectiveness of our school systems in America. It is certainly the reason why you wait for hours at the DMV and any other government operation while the workers drink coffee, chat, and basically do zero work for their salaries.