Jose Maldonado-Rivera has finally been removed as principal of Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering after he was found to have engaged in an “inappropriate financial relationship” with a school employee.

This, more than five months after a 12-year-old Columbia student drowned on a shockingly ill-planned field trip to a Long Island beach last summer.

A Department of Education report on the tragedy cited an insufficient number of chaperones, noting that students, even those who couldn’t swim, were allowed into the choppy surf despite a sign warning that no lifeguards were on duty.

Moreover, parents had never been given permission slips to sign.

Yet DOE officials let him keep his job on a probationary basis, while taking away his tenure.

Further investigation disclosed that he’d let the school’s parent coordinator, with whom he later became romantically involved, live in his apartment rent-free and had her escort his son on a field trip to Puerto Rico.

At which point, DOE removed him from office and will move to fire him.

A failure in judgment?

Sure.

But more outrageous than an incident in which a young student died, while others were put at grave risk?

As we said then, it’s beyond comprehension that any principal would have allowed such a trip. (Teachers had long complained that lax supervision was standard on school field trips.)

And it’s even more incomprehensible that he was allowed to keep his job.

Sure, that’s now been rectified — but, again, had he not entered into this financial relationship, he’d still be principal.

It just doesn’t seem right.