700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

http://tinyurl.com/n37lx4

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 22, 5:20 pm ET
NEW YORK – 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.

"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."

Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

"It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

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Sounds like NYC needs to fire some administrators and hire arbitrators with the funds saved.

Originally posted by zeeblebot
http://tinyurl.com/n37lx4

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 22, 5:20 pm ET
NEW YORK – 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 aroun ...[text shortened]... protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

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I know someone who went through this in Los Angeles. They were trying to get rid of her because of her disability, but that's a dangerous legal road to go down.

Basically this seems to be how they get teachers out of the room without having to deal with lawyes.

Bizarre. Sounds like NYC needs some poldermodel.

any effort to truly reform education MUST take on the teachers' unions.

Reducing the cost of education means reducing the number of teachers and-or reducing the total amount of money they are paid. Yet all you ever hear about are proposals such as "smaller classroom sizes" that require an increase in the number of teachers. Improving the quality of education means improving the quality of teachers - which means subjecting them to some sort of standard and getting rid of the ones that don't measure up.

One idea would be to INCREASE classroom sizes -- why not double classroom sizes, fire half of the teachers based on their quality, while giving the remaining teachers something like a 30% increase in pay? The good teachers would make more money, each student would spend time with better teachers, and the people could get a nice tax cut - win-win-win - the only "losers" would be the bad teachers

I know that there are a lot of complex things that would need to be addressed to make such a plan work - but right now no one would ever dare to consider such a plan because the teachers' unions would HOWL.

The Republicans are a party looking for some ideas. Being that the Democrats are married to teachers' unions, there's a lot of open turf here for the Republicans to grab. Come up with something that will legitimately improve the education system and force the Democrats to take the Rush Limbaugh role on this issue.

Originally posted by Melanerpes
any effort to truly reform education MUST take on the teachers' unions.

Reducing the cost of education means reducing the number of teachers and-or reducing the total amount of money they are paid. Yet all you ever hear about are proposals such as "smaller classroom sizes" that require an increase in the number of teachers. Improving the quality of edu ...[text shortened]... education system and force the Democrats to take the Rush Limbaugh role on this issue.

We could try what they did at UC Berkeley. One teacher for a LOT of students and assistants with their own subportion of the class and independent class with only the TA.

Originally posted by zeeblebot
http://tinyurl.com/n37lx4

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 22, 5:20 pm ET
NEW YORK – 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 aroun protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

...

come on. Just about EVERY professional organization (not your dumpy 7-11 type store) does the same thing to employees.

You are suspended with full pay so as to avoid lawsuits should you be found to be innocent later. It's standard. No big deal. Move along.

AND WAKE UP!!

😞

I agree - you can't just fire people because someone accused them of something. Sometimes a student fails a class and decides to "get even" by making a phony sexual abuse allegation.

If there's a criminal charge involved, I can see being wary about letting that teacher continue to teach until there's been an acquittal. Perhaps schools could get an insurance policy that would cover the costs of having to pay these teachers to do nothing?

On the other hand, if it involves the violation of the school's own rules (such as insubordination), there needs to be a way to resolve this relatively quickly. But this is where teachers' unions often get in the way and make it almost impossible to fire anyone.