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Teachers union and city in talks to shrink rubber rooms

Department of Education and teachers union officials could have a deal within weeks that would shrink the number of teachers sitting in rubber rooms.

Sources within the United Federation of Teachers said that the two sides have been negotiating for several weeks outside of contract talks, which have stalled, but would not give any specifics about how the population of teachers in the rooms might be reduced.

The rubber rooms, technically called “reassignment centers,” are student-less classrooms where about 650 teachers and administrators accused of misconduct or incompetence report for duty every day as they wait to be officially charged or have their cases heard. The wait can sometimes stretch over years, during which teachers receive their full salaries. According to Chancellor Joel Klein, last year the city spent some $30 million covering these teachers’ salaries.

Following a New Yorker piece that slammed the UFT for making it extremely difficult to fire rubber room teachers, the rubber rooms and their unhappy inhabitants have become a political problem for the union. But they’ve also become a cost and an irritant to Klein, whose administration has only been able to fire three teachers for incompetence in the last two years.

City and union sources did not disclose how they are planning to drain the rubber rooms. But one relatively easy target could be the rubber room teachers who have been waiting for more than six months for the DOE to wrap up its investigations and charge them with something. Given the expense the city incurs each day these people wait to be charged and the fact that the contract spells out a six month limit for investigations, they could be returned to their classrooms or the investigations could be sped up.

Another cost-cutting item that might be on the table comes from the city’s list of contract demands, which suggest suspending the pay of teachers who have been charged with offenses. Under the plan, a teacher who is later reinstated would be reimbursed at a rate of 150 percent for the pay she missed. The change would not cause rubber rooms to disappear, but it could sharply reduce their ranks. Only teachers who are under investigation and have yet to be charged would remain on payroll and in the rubber rooms.

Klein has argued that the city should not have to pay teachers in rubber rooms “if there is probable cause to believe they are guilty.” Klein has also said that the process of charging and holding termination hearings would be faster if full-time judges decided the cases, rather than the arbitrators who only hear cases a few days a month.

The UFT’s own contract demands call for building up a group of mediators who would try to help the two sides settle cases before they reached a full hearing.

Department of Education officials would not comment on the negotiations.

  • http://southbronxschool.blogspot.com Teacher In The Bronx

    No, no, no, to suspending w/o pay teachers who are charged. This will be so taken advantage of. The lawyers instead of weighing evidence and costs in putting a teacher in the RR will have one last concern and you will see more teachers being charged with that in place.

    Even NYPD the max suspension w/o pay is 30 days.

  • leonie haimson

    This is a no brainer: speeding up the investigations and holding to the six month limit (though it should be shorter). But what’s stopping the city from doing this this anyway?

  • Jeff S

    You must not give the arrogant, incompetent, unqualified, uncertified lawyer masquerading as an educator this power. One of the problems is so many of the Principals who are graduates of his Leadership Academy are incapable of providing the proper support for teachers based on their total lack of experience or properly document a case. This country was built on the principle that a person is not to be found guilty unless proven so beyond a reasonable doubt. Just because Klein and his cronies do not know how to properly document case is no reason to deprive innocent teachers of their pay. If Klein is given this power, there will be no hurry to complete the cases and properly investigate debateable charges. If the UFT caves on this, they are crazy and another step in selling their membership down the river.

  • Charles Turner

    Most of the rubber room teachers are guilty so why bother. I say fire them first then make them beg for their jobs back

  • The New Is Out About the UFT and the DOE

    The current UFT powers and even more so the DOE created the rubber room system to make teachers look bad. The both have used the rubber room system for their own slandering of the profession of teaching and of each other. Who on earth in their right mind would allow a person to get paid for years for doing nothing? A bunch of STUPID IDIOTS! The UFT and the DOE along with mayor Bloomberg have destroyed education and now are letting private charter companies rule the day. History will show this time, the time of the ending of public schools, the ending of teachers unions, to be very, very bad for society and a complete manipulation and take over of the rich. All public services are in their last days. How sad to sell our families, children and communities to companies. The rubber room was one little thing that those not in education, regular citizens, pick up on yet blame the teachers for when in reality, the teachers had nothing to do with it. A one to two month limit to investigate a teacher incident should be the rule. But as the recent storm shows, private companies and municipalities are on skeleton staff and cannot clean up down trees for days, and restore power to residents, or the city even fix pot holes, how would they be able to process an incident in a fair amount of time? Bloomberg cannot even get pot holes fixed and he is the Almighty Demigod and Czar of public education in NYC? That makes NYC totally screwed! Bloomberg did not go all nuts and crazy about charter school his first 8 years, but now that he has started what may be the first set of his stolen years, (come on, we all know he is a power hungry demon and would love to rule NYC forever – only he can do it remember and with his girlfriend planning to run for office, he will still have his hand in politics and with the Supreme Court ruling that any millionaire/billionaire can donate and control a political candidate, you know the mayor will increase his billions even more, but I digress), Bloomberg’s rubber rooms have served him well as he goes for the jugular of the UFT and the citizens who serve as teachers to our society.

  • Philip Nobile

    The Delegates Assembly passed a resolution last year saying that “OSI has often investigated in a biased manner.” Yet the UFT has done NOTHING to protect its members from such bias. Unknown to members, UFT reps have a strict policy of denying members notes the reps take during interviews with investigators, that is, if they bother to take notes.

    Speeding up investigations “often” conducted “in a biased manner” will harm the reassigned. The UFT must never agree to rubber room reforms without dealing with the corruption of OSI and its sister OEO.

    And wouldn’t it be nice if President Mulgrew and his Unity crew stooped to consult with us rubber roomer before negotiating our fates with the DOE?     

  • Mustafa

    To the poster above. I don’t get it. Don’t you want to be cleared so that you can return back to teaching?

    Isn’t that what Mulgrew is trying to do? Seems to me that he wants to stop the false allegations and the placement of good teachers in the rubber rooms.

  • Philip Nobile

    Mustafa,
    Teachers can’t be cleared by “biased” investigations. Mulgrew has never addressed false allegations, as far as I know.

     UFT reps collude with investigators by remaining silent during interviews. Basically, the UFT has thrown us to the wolves before charges are filed. Then NYSUT lawyers take over and we are subject to hearings in which arbitrators often feel that they must split the difference and find teachers guilty of something.

    The UFT should stop the nonsense or at least attempt to reduce the evidentiary damage before the hearing stage. THAT the union does not do! 

  • http://www.teachers4justicenow.org jennifer

    I was in the Rubber Room from 2005-2008 because i’m a Whistleblower I was among one of the first Teachers routed out of my school after the inception of the Klein think tank known as the Principal Academy. All trails including the use of the Rubber Room lead right back to the orchestrated take-over of public education by rich people who see it as the last frontier for exploitation of the masses using African American and Hispanic children.

    In the emails uncovered and written by Eva Maskowitz to Chancellor Klein, a comment is made by her that that tells the truth of their intent. Regarding the four Harlem Academies she has been able to co-op, Eva enthusiastically tells Klein that things are going so good that they will eventually have “an army of consumers”.

    Co-opting the minds of our children will be worse than the exploitation of labor experienced by African Americans during the shameful years of slavery. If we think a generation of gansta rap created by the ignorant and broke was bad, i shutter to think of the perverse ways the power brokers will use our children in the future.

    Yes, this is about the Rubber Room but also about so much more because what you do their Teachers; you do to the Student. They are inherently connected!!! Kill off good Teachers and you kill off the potential for great Students. Anyone still stupid enough to think that the majority of Teachers sitting in the Rubber Rooms are guilty of anything more than being in the way of these people after all that has been reported, over the years, I’m sorry they are just stupid.

    And so in the spirit of the great ones, join us in Federal Court as NYC Teachers challenge the Department of Educations’ right to subject Teachers to Rubber Rooms and what goes on in them. To the writer who says fire the Teachers, This is America honey…let’s see what the Federal judges have to say, you keep watching and being “The American Idle”

    Visit http://www.Teachers4JusticeNow.org for more information that will be coming to you soon about the upcoming Federal case being bought before the Eastern District.

  • Tutors

    This matter should be looked into with great concern because a huge amount of the tax payer’s money goes into paying the salaries of ‘rubber-room’ occupants. Instead of lingering on the charges, cases should be handed over to full-time judges to arrive on a decision as early as possible.

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