Another article about the lunacy of layoffs purely by seniority:

School principals would be forced to use crummy teachers with "unsatisfactory" ratings to fill jobs if the city lays off instructors based on the controversial "last in, first out" seniority system, education officials said yesterday.

The Department of Education said that to fill vacancies triggered by layoffs due to budget cuts, principals would have to choose from the roughly 1,200 instructors available in the so-called "Absent Teacher Reserve" pool.

Education officials said many of these tenured teachers are castoffs who've been unable to land full-time jobs in schools -- and a much higher percentage of them have received the dreaded "U" rating in previous school stints.

Of the 1,200 teachers in the ATR, 129 have Unsatisfactory ratings -- almost 11 percent. That's more than five times higher than the citywide average of 2 percent of teachers receiving U ratings.

And these teachers would replace good young teachers in the neediest schools under "last in, first out," officials said.

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