As a 14 month denizen of a DOE Rubber Room, I appreciate your effort to expose the outrageous waste of taxpayers’ dollars that they represent. You have correctly identified that it is the result of a broken system but you shy away from pointing the finger at who is mostly responsible for this. The union contract is to protect teachers from being fired without “just cause” and if due process were followed with hearings and decisions made within six months, this situation would be entirely minimized. The DOE legal department goes for overkill in their charges to show Chancellor Klein how they are cleaning out the “bad teachers” without even knowing that some of these teachers might be worth retaining. They just want to show good “guilty statistics” such as who was terminated, who paid hefty fines (usually $5,000-$15,000) by admitting guilt to one or more charges (even when they aren’t) in order to return to the classroom and save their pensions. Few are exonerated and even fewer lose their licenses.
It is essentially a kangaroo court; each UFT lawyer works closely on six cases at a time with a DOE lawyer overseen by an administrative judge who wants to keep a $1200-1800/day job by making decisions that placate both sides. Many decisions take three to ten months to be issued. That’s after one waits up to six months for charges, and up to 18 months thereafter for a hearing. One could have no intention of returning to the classroom, be willing to sign a resignation deal but instead sit there throughout this Byzantine process. Why not write a book while increasing one’s pension if you are willing to endure the fact that few people from the DOE treat you as a professional and you get managed by a receptionist with half your education. The DOE hopes these teachers get frustrated and threatened enough to give up due to the psychological stress and sheer boredom (they even block access to the internet despite the fact that it would cost them nothing to allow it). Your fellow “inmates” get into petty disputes as nerves fray while the knitting needles fly and the dominoes clack loudly creating a Kafkaesque environment.
Environmentally, this windowless room has been declared by the NY State Dept of Labor’s Division of Safety and Health Bureau to be in violation of safety/ health standards and the DOE to be in failure to comply with same when notified of their violations.
Now for the facts as I have informally assessed them. Essentially, who is in the Reassignment Rooms?
1) Teachers who have outside arrests/offenses (maybe 5 %).
2) Incompetent Teachers (maybe 15%)
3) Teachers Accused of Alleged Misconduct for (at most 20%):
a-sexual, corporal or verbal abuse (some of these cases are handled quickly since the teachers may be suspended without pay for several months prior to the hearing).
b-substance abuse (these cases are processed here since the DOE is the only city agency that has no Employee Assistance Program: the police, fire, and sanitation departments all handle these issues through EAPs, meaning they are handled as a medical issue first per the Disability Act and not as a discipline issue).
4) Teachers (at least 60%) who are victims of :
a-student false allegations (for some reason, the principals and the DOE primarily side with the students in these cases, probably fearing lawsuits). In the final hearings, the students frequently do not show up and often admit to lying in the final analysis.
b-administrative harassment of alleged “insubordinate” teachers who may disagree with their principal’s policies and are sent to these rooms on such trumped up charges as: “word wall was not updated” (for a high school science class); students did not work in groups (group work is now mandated?); and “no opportunity was given to reflect on learning” (in a 40 minute period?). These might be suggestions in an observation but certainly should not be career-ending charges.
c-ageism- over half the room is over age 50. I believe this is the primary cause for the increase in the membership of the Rubber Room, especially now that principals have control of their budgets. These teachers represent higher salaries, thus bigger chunks of their budgets. They also don’t bend as easily to the new pedagogical mandates; many teach effectively based on years of experience.
d-unsupported allegations- some teachers never receive charges (one teacher is in there over two years without charges) because an investigation was never done.
Many of these issues could be resolved at the school level. 3020-a hearings are for serious termination issues but are being overused by the legal department. It is also a collection department for them given the hefty fines that are imposed. Some teachers in the Rubber Room would leave the city system for teaching positions elsewhere if they did not put a hold/flag on their license by starting these proceedings and then delaying them for two years. One is captive to their incompetence and glacial pace. Whether or not one views the union rules as obstructive, cases that are ready to be heard in 3-6 months drag on for two years because the DOE does not have enough lawyers and administrative judges. They prefer to badmouth the union and waste taxpayers’ money in order to make their point.
And you think I should be doing administrative work for them in the meantime? I have dreams of the sabotage I could incur although it might not be noticed in light of the general level of work the DOE is accustomed to.
Name Withheld by Request
