New York City and its teacher unions have reached a deal to put an end to a bizarre and Kafkaesque system in which suspended teachers are placed in holding centers, dubbed “rubber rooms,” doing nothing on full pay in some cases for as long as 10 years.
The rubber rooms — so nicknamed after the padded cells of old-style mental hospitals — have become a symbol of the unacceptable face of the city’s education system, which is the largest in the US. Around 600 teachers are currently occupying the temporary reassignment centers, as they are officially known, in locations across the city, including a trailer site in Washington Heights.
From Monday to Friday during school hours the teachers sit in the rooms under instruction to do whatever they like, so long as it has nothing to do with teaching.
Some play Scrabble, read books or do yoga, others run small businesses on their laptops and many wile away the hours by sleeping.
All the occupants are all on full-pay, at a cost to the city of at least US$30 million a year. The reasons cited for their confinement to what has been described as purgatory or jail for teachers range from excessive lateness or absence, sexual misconduct with a student, physical abuse, incompetence or use of drugs or alcohol.
What the occupants all have in common is that they are waiting for the charges against them to be filed and then adjudicated, a state of limbo that often lasts for two or three years, and occasionally much longer.
In some cases, teachers have been known to wait for three years before they are told what they are alleged to have done wrong.
The education department and the unions have traditionally blamed each other: Management accused the unions of putting up so many barriers it becomes virtually impossible to sack bad or abusive teachers; the unions accused management of failing to invest in the resources needed to speed up the hearings process.
Present occupants of the centers will have to wait until September until the new system comes into effect, but when it does those with minor cases will be given non-teaching jobs inside schools. Anyone facing criminal charges will be sent home without pay and if sexual or financial misconduct is alleged they will be allowed to stay at home on full pay.
In new cases, charges must be brought within 60 days and hearings into their cases convened within a further 15 days of that, or the teacher will be entitled to return to the classroom.
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