As if there were a need for a further reminder of the ridiculous nature of the contracts which bind the New York City public school system, now comes the latest absurdity. As reported in the New York Times, the teachers and principals unions have filed grievances over, what else, changes in the grievance process. The grievance process is the barrier that makes it more difficult for principals to fire incompetent teachers. As New Yorkers were reminded by City Council Member Eva Moskowitz’s hearings this month, it can take a principal up to two years to fire a teacher. Aside from the formal firing, a principal or department head has to build a meticulous record of a teacher’s poor performance, entering negative comments in the teacher’s personnel file. Each of those negative comments can be challenged by the union in a grievance, meaning numerous trips down to the regional or central school administration office for a principal who wants to defend his or her actions.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has been trying to make this process less burdensome on principals by allowing them to participate in grievance proceedings by telephone. This saves the principals quite a bit of travel time, better spent in their schools, and it reduces the deterrent factor when principals are considering firing teachers. The United Federation of Teachers has responded with what is apparently an attempt to eliminate these proceedings altogether so that a teacher can get straight to an arbitrator. The principals union, which also represents assistant principals, also subject to poor reviews from principals, signed on with the teachers union.

Mr. Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have won themselves the ornery behavior of the teachers with their drive to centralize and standardize the curriculum and teaching styles in the city’s giant school system. But the grievance problem predates them. The New York Sun’s Kathleen Lucadamo reported Monday on fully 215 teachers who are listening to music, reading newspapers, or doing administrative chores while they wait for the grievance process to inch along. “About 50 teachers have been on desk duty a year, 25 have been there two years, and 12 have been there three or more years. Two have been languishing there five years,” Miss Lucadamo reported.

“If you are getting paid, you have every incentive to drag this out,” Mr. Klein said. “We need that money to hire additional teachers.”Mr. Klein said the four-step grievance process delays attempts to fire bad teachers. “It’s a small part of why the grievance process needs to be sped up,” he said.

Mr. Klein, a lawyer, no doubt realizes that the terms of the existing contract with the unions must be honored, and that due process is important. But he’s absolutely correct to do everything he can within the letter of the law to speed up the process that keeps bad teachers on the taxpayer-paid city payroll for much longer than a private company would ever tolerate a poor performer. The teachers union represents all teachers, even the bad ones. But the good teachers within the union no doubt realize that the bad apples hurt their reputation as much as they hurt children.