From AM-NY:Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.
Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" -- off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.
The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues -- pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.
10 comments:
Unions are killing this city.
This is a failure of administration, and nothing else. They could be put to useful activity, not this. Lesson plans and Unit Plans can be developed, for example. Or, their cases can move along swiftly. A dereliction of duty by one Joel Klein.
Rubber rooms are the most depressing places for a teacher to be. The people there are depressed, loaded with anxiety and some have been falsely accused. You know some kids, especially high school kids are very devious and know all they have to do is make an accusation if they happen to hate their teacher.
One of the first things I was taught by my fellow teachers is to make sure you are never alone with any student. Never shut the classroom door if you are and never, ever put your hand(even in an innocent way) on a student.
To Anonymous, I can assure the UFT isn't killing anyone but themselves. I cannot be happier that Weingarten is (finally) stepping down.
You think it is Klein's fault that the hearings take so long? Sorry, blame the union for that one too.
When people are innocent, their name needs to be cleared quickly. When they are guilty, they need quick termination. This situation is in no one's interest.
I also believe that these teachers can be given some type of work while they are in limbo, both to save the city some money and also to save the sanity of those who may be the victim of defamation or vendetta.
Can they grade essays, photocopy materials for upcoming exams, answer phones, do anything? No one is entitled to be paid for doing nothing, and no one who is innocent should be shoved out the door because they cannot stand feeling bored and useless.
Keeping someone on salary and giving them nothing to do is a common practice to force executives to quit in industry. If you are a child rapist or nut you should be FIRED, not quit. Good teachers, however, are too valuable to lose to spite.
This is not new. So much for city controll of the schools.
Same thing happens at my old school district in another state. Teachers are unfireable. One teacher was falling down drunk at work and had lost custody of her own children, but was still teaching at our school. The parents complained, so the principal planned to move her to another grade. They kept complaining, so the district gave her a desk job the next year. The following year they moved her to another school.
If we have professionals who are drumming their thumbs, waiting to be exonerated from the accusations of some kid who got a bad grade, that's a mark of incompetent management.
"practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits..."
Yeah, good luck with that. How many famous novels or artist can we name, whose works were made in a rubber eroom?
David Pakter was treated extremely unfairly!
If you've never heard of him, check out the following:
http://uft.org/news/teacher/top/axed/
http://www.davidpakterwatches.com
http://www.old-master-portraits.com
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22David+Pakter%22+teacher&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
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