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NYC spends $65M a year on teachers not in classrooms
2008-05-04
The number of city teachers yanked from their classrooms because of accusations of wrongdoing has doubled in four years, and some spend years collecting their salaries while awaiting disciplinary hearings, a newspaper reported Sunday. Their pay costs the nation's largest public school system an estimated $65 million a year, not including the cost of hiring substitutes or renting space for the so-called "rubber rooms" where accused teachers spend their work days, the Daily News reported. Accused of offenses ranging from excessive lateness to sex abuse, an average of 700 teachers at any given time read magazines, play cards and nap in the "rubber rooms" -- officially, Temporary Reassignment Centers, the newspaper reported. It cited city data. As of Jan. 29, one teacher accused of sexually abusing a child had been assigned to a rubber room for five and a half years, the newspaper said. The average accused teacher waits four months for investigators to decide whether to bring formal charges. If they do, it takes an average of nine more months for a hearing and another six months for a decision. School officials said teachers are pulled from classrooms only if evidence suggests they are dangerous to children, and state laws and teachers' contract rules make it difficult to speed the disciplinary process. "I'm not sitting here telling you that I think this is an ideal system," said the city Education Department's chief lawyer, Michael Best. "We're in a situation where we need to balance our obligation to safeguard children with our legal obligation for fairness to teachers." Teachers union president Randi Weingarten called for swift investigations, saying the so-called rubber rooms were "demoralizing, horrible places."
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