The two teachers were -- obviously justifiably -- tossed out of the school. But since they have tenure, they’ve been sent to a “Temporary Reassignment Center,” dubbed “rubber room,” where teachers accused of misdeeds receive full taxpayer-financed pay and benefits – averaging $71,000 a year – for doing pretty much nothing all day while their cases are “investigated.”
The problem is, these investigations take, on the average, a full year, and the rest of us, as taxpayers, must pay for what can only be described as undeserved, high-priced welfare for them.
How long should it normally take to investigate an incident like the alleged one at Madison? How complicated is it to determine whether the janitor who said he saw the teachers naked in the classroom was lying?
If the usual workings of the Department of Education, at the mercy of the all-powerful United Federation of Teachers union, are any guide, it will take far longer than it would in any other conceivable venue, public or private.
But let’s look at the larger picture. Anne Forte, a DOE spokeswoman, told us that on the average, there are 550 teachers in the rubber rooms at any given point, being paid an average $71,000 salary. Now, class, $71,000 times 550 equals $39,050,000. The city (read: we) are paying more than $39 million a year as hundreds of teachers facing charges ranging from ineffective teaching to serious misconduct are investigated. This, while kids have to plod along with battered old textbooks, deteriorating school buildings, and cutbacks in everything from sports to music.
It’s shameful, not only because of the incredible waste of money that should go to the children, but also because it paints all teachers – the majority of whom are sincerely dedicated and effective educators – with the same brush as the turkeys who populate the rubber rooms, not to mention the more-than-a-few incompetent, lazy, or educationally harmful teachers who somehow get tenure and remain in the classroom year after year because administrators don’t relish jumping through all the UFT-imposed hoops to get rid of them.
What’s the solution? It’s really up to Mayor Bloomberg. Forte said that Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein “would like to end the rubber rooms as we know it.”
What’s stopping them? Bloomberg was able to do what no mayor before him was able to do – take control of the schools from the ineffective Board of Education and the corrupt local school boards.
Now he has to show he really has the right stuff, and stand up to the UFT.
Think you can take ‘em on, Mayor?
