Up the Down and Dirty Staircase at Today’s Schools

And in education news this week:

* A substitute teacher, 46, is under investigation in Los Angeles for allegedly stripping off his clothes Wednesday in front of a fourth-grade class.

* A coach, 44, was convicted Thursday on two felony counts of child molestation involving Pasadena high school athletes.

* A day-care center reopened Wednesday morning in Costa Mesa, nine days after a man drove his car--deliberately, police say--into the preschool’s playground, killing two kids, ages 4 and 3.

Remember these when you’re listening to stories about how terrible today’s children are.

They still have a long way to go to catch up to adults in the crackpot department.

If I had a kid in a school these days, I’d be giving serious thought to three things:

A military academy, self-education at home or a nice little 18-year exchange program with Switzerland.

Otherwise I’d hire my kid a permanent bodyguard the size of the governor of Minnesota.

I might not even let my son or daughter go to school unless I could go. I’d ride on the bus next to them, sit in the desk behind them in class, eat at the next table in the cafeteria, run laps with them in gym and double-date to the prom. My poor kids would beg me to go away before I embarrassed them one more minute.

Then I’d just hide behind the bushes and watch them from there.

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No wonder a revised state budget being proposed today by Gov. Gray Davis will reportedly include $100 million for school safety programs, more than two-fifths of which would be used to hire a new counselor for every high school in California.

That was a grim note struck by Delaine Eastin, superintendent of public instruction, in pointing out that California’s schools average one counselor for every 1,052 students--worst in the U.S.

Good start, governor.

Of course, sometimes it feels as if we could use 1,052 counselors for every student.

Just think about the kind of day those poor counselors were having Thursday at the El Sereno Elementary School, trying to explain to pupils and their parents why a teacher allegedly stood up in front of a class and instructed them in Introductory Sex Ed.

Fourth-graders shouldn’t have to worry about anything more complicated than where’s Waldo? They’re supposed to bring an apple to a teacher, not a fig leaf.

Nobody knows why this stripteacher may have shed his duds. Maybe he had a mental episode. (One witness thought he might be having a seizure, but a LAPD detective called it a criminal act and issued a warrant.)

“He’s never going to work at this school or any other school again,” a school spokesperson said firmly Thursday, unwilling even to give the guy a reference as a nudist camp counselor.

His teaching days may be over. Goodbye, Mister Strips. Back in my day, the worst thing a substitute teacher ever did was wear a ridiculous suit, not take one off.

We trusted teachers then. Now even the women are going off the deep end. That one in Seattle got pregnant by a kid in her class.

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I can sympathize with accidents, like when a high school student last year got burned when a science experiment blew up. His teacher wasn’t trying to steer the boy wrong.

Clyde Turner, though, was testing a different kind of chemistry at John Muir High. Or so a jury decided Thursday when the Pasadena school’s coach was found guilty of molesting two boys, then 15 and 16, who had been on his track and field team.

One boy testified that the coach invited him to an apartment, played a porno tape and began to disrobe. The other said Turner took him into a bedroom and tried to pull him onto the bed.

About all I do know is, we are way past the day when a school’s problems could be solved by a PTA. We are getting to a point where the students need counselors, the teachers need counselors, and the counselors need counselors.

Public service announcements used to ask: “It’s 10 o’clock . . . do you know where your children are?” If they asked us that now, I wouldn’t know if they meant a.m. or p.m.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com