Class Absent for Chancellor  

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's latest offensive against the union representing school supervisors reminds us of his background as an attorney and that old joke about why sharks don't eat lawyers: professional courtesy.

Mr. Klein last week mixed sanctimony with snarkiness in a letter to Principals explaining how he was saving them from being saddled with any of the 44 Assistant Principals who were recently excessed from their jobs. Noting that the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators contract allows senior administrators who are displaced in this fashion to bump junior ones from their positions, he lamented the prospect of "tearing up the teams that you have built over months and years. I believe that is wrong for you and, more importantly, wrong for our kids."

Such compassion! Such concern for the big picture! It's enough to make us want to officially change his name to Caring Joel Klein.

Except that, if truth be told, it's all a crock. As one of his spokesmen later noted, the Chancellor has the power to assign the excessed APs to other jobs, and intends to do so.

So why the grandstand play to Principals, who given that most of them were once APs, might resent the way Mr. Klein stigmatized the excessed employees by implying that they were charity cases? And if what he did with the excessed APs wasn't going to affect them, why bother to send the letter?

It could be that it gnaws at him that he will be spending slightly more than $5 million on salaries for administrators who he plans to keep out of the schools. But considering that Mr. Klein recently agreed to a $17 million no-bid contract with a management firm to streamline the school system, it's safe to say money isn't really the issue.

And so it's reasonable to conclude that the Chancellor just wanted to stir the pot in his ongoing feud with the CSA and its president, Jill Levy. Contrary to a Daily News editorial that speculated, without any basis in fact, that the excessed APs were part of the caravan of "lemons" who continually travel the school system because the union contract blocks their removal, it turned out - as the News subsequently reported - that all of them had received satisfactory ratings last year.

Ms. Levy hasn't always been temperate in her dealings with the Chancellor and City Hall, but Mr. Klein's latest public-relations gambit makes that a bit more understandable. School supervisors have just begun their fourth year working under an expired contract. That would be frustrating enough without having to suffer the insincere assurances of Caring Joel that he only wants what's best for those he calls his school leaders.