We were wrong. The workshop was fascinating. According to the workshop leader, an ancient classroom vet named Gail Kramer, here are just a few things no teacher can ever do again:

1. pat a student on the shoulder to show encouragement.

2. take a crying kindergartner onto his or her lap.

3. break up a fight

4. use the students’ bathroom

5. drink a morning coffee in front of students

6. talk in class on the cell phone

7. after being beaten into a coma by a violent student, sue the school system and expect to win money.

8. stay in school after hours to fix up the classroom or correct papers

We never thought we’d say this, but NYC teachers, who make on average, $30,000 less than their suburban brethren, have it worse than ever.

Even more interesting was Ms. Kramer’s explanation of the characteristics of violent students. Most of us put self-preservation before pride; we back down when we feel threatened. Violent students put pride before self-preservation. Furthermore, non-violent types feel more or less ok standing about three feet from another person. A violence-prone person needs 12-15 feet to feel comfortable.

Scary shit.

Although the schools’ principals graduated from Mayor Bloomberg’s much-touted, privately-funded and grandiose-sounding principal training program, The New York City Leadership Academy, the schools are beyond rescue. Collectively, the targeted high schools have a graduation rate in the fortieth percentile. Tilden has a 43.5 percent rate and Lafayette has 44.4 percent. (Percentage-wise, that’s a lot higher than Recharger’s dating success in college when, after asking out 456 girls, he scored a single, five-minute cup of coffee with a scissors-wielding lesbian).

Starting with the freshmen class, the five doomed schools will close a grade at a time, taking three years to complete the process. Smaller high schools with no more than 500 students will replace them.

According to city educrats—generally speaking, the least creative people on earth-- “schools to be closed had notably low four-year graduation rates, did a particularly poor job helping students who were already behind as incoming freshmen, and proved exceedingly unpopular with prospective students.”

Duh.

South Shore, for example, is the last choice for eighth-grade applicants.

-- Tatyana Gimelshteyn

Some parents take berserker measures.

A Brooklyn parent rents a one-bedroom basement apartment for $620 a month so that her child can attend Park Slope’s tony PS 321, where more than 85 percent of the kids meet reading and math requirements. “It’s cheaper than private school,” shrugged the mom, an attorney who actually lives in Williamsburg. “None of the schools near me are up to par. So I did what I needed to do.” The ghost apartment--which she uses as a proof of the address--is furnished with a single lamp to generate an electric bill.

Compared to our hovel, sounds like the Trump Tower.

-- Aleksandr Shusterman

SO

The Post reports the new plan will allow students to check phones at the door, where they will be stored in lockers for twenty-five to fifty cents a day, a compromise between Klein’s wishes for an orderly school system and parents’ wishes for safety.

Says David Cantor, Klein’s shockingly eloquent press secretary, “If we find this addresses the problems parents have with the ban and does so in a safe way for the kids, then we would consider doing this system wide.”

While we wring our hands at the injustice of Cantor not being in the front ranks of civil rights leaders, we have two questions:

1. How did kids survive kidnappers, sex molesters and other bad guys before cell phones?

2. Do Chancellor Klein and Simpsons boss Charles Montgomery Burns look exactly alike, or did we eat too many mushrooms on New Year’s?

-- Tatyana Gimelshteyn

But negatives remain: staircase explosions and police state conditions give the school a Boston Public charm. Most disturbing are the Homeland Security measures on Dekalb Avenue-relentlessly patrolled by school security officers who harangue hapless students for stopping to adjust a bookbag or even--give us a break--smoke crack. Sheesh. A visiting reporter (whose identity will remain shrouded in secrecy, but whose initials are Josh Shnayer) was told that he could be “taken to the station” for not walking. More disturbing is the new ID card system that Principal Asher promises will cut down on cutting classes and lateness—students must swipe ID cards to enter the building, swipe again to enter the lunchroom, and—we swear we are not making this up—swipe to enter hallways and leave classrooms.

-- Josh Shnayer