Watch out, New York: The Environmental Protection Agency is moving its protection racket into the classroom.

The grasping green giant intends to go into about 740 city schools to sniff out PCBs, the supposedly toxic chemical found in old caulking and light fixtures.

No doubt it’ll find plenty — the stuff is ubiquitous — and then the fun will begin. Think of it as the cleanup job from hell.

It was the EPA that helped turn the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero into a nine-year-plus farce.

The building is finally down to its last story, endlessly stalled by the sheer incompetence of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the EPA’s insistence that every molecule of a suspect substance be removed before demolition could start.

We say “suspect substance” because after the first few months there never was anything truly dangerous in the structure.

Now the EPA is again poised to pounce.

Under federal pressure, school officials closed 10 classrooms in Staten Island last week as the EPA tested lights for PCBs, which were banned in 1979.

The EPA seeks to shutter hundreds more schools in a costly, pointless hunt for PCBs.

Costly, because it’ll run the city $1 billion and leave thousands of students adrift.

Pointless, because officials still can’t muster any evidence that PCBs in such small quantities are actually harmful.

(Indeed, the only known PCB-related fatality occurred when a workman was crushed in a dredging accident two years ago during an EPA-ordered cleanup of PCBs in the Hudson River.)

Only two classrooms were closed at PS 36 in Staten Island last week, but wary parents picketed the school — and more than 600 kids stayed home — as City Councilman Vincent Ignizio called for the school to close completely.

That kind of disruption will go citywide if the EPA gets its way. And it’s already seeking more inspections.

City Hall must push back against the feds’ nonsense. Hard.