Now we have “furlough Fridays.”

What more is it going to take to convince the public of the pressing need to transform our schools into student-based institutions, instead of the labor-based cesspools they’ve become in recent years.

In case you haven’t heard, the state of Hawaii, facing the same type of budget crunch as other state governments, has to cut more than $400 million from its education budget over the next two years. Logically, that would lead to some teacher layoffs in a number of school districts.

But the Hawaii State Teachers Association has a better idea. It wants to adopt a four-day school week, with unpaid “furlough Fridays,” to avoid any layoffs. In other words, the teachers are willing to sacrifice one-fifth of their students’ education to keep the paychecks rolling in.

The idea is apparently catching on in other states, as well.

The union’s perogative of “no lay-offs” is clearly self-serving. Our organization, Education Action Group Foundation, which is based in Michigan, has estimated that 2,500 school layoffs in Michigan equals about a $1 million hit to the Michigan Education Association in terms of dues. When a state is talking about significantly more than that, one can see why the union doesn’t want layoffs.

In one way, the plan is sort of a breath of fresh air. In many states, union teachers are notorious for throwing their younger colleagues under the bus at layoff time, instead of accepting adjustments to their salaries and benefits so teachers with less seniority can stick around.

But this is not an acceptable alternative. As reported on FoxNews.com, the Obama administration has been pushing for longer school years, to help American kids catch up with their peers overseas. Our children clearly need more class time, not less. If schools have budget problems, cuts will have to occur, but those cuts should never be aimed at children, particularly when it comes to instructional time.

This is hard evidence that the teachers unions put their needs before the needs of the students. That’s a major, fundamental flaw in our public education system, and it has to be addressed in short order. Teachers that are willing to walk away from their students one day per week, just to keep everyone employed, are not really teachers at all. They lack dedication to their profession and they don’t belong in the presence of our children.