The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: DixieBelle on March 13, 2008, 10:08:37 PM
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September 30, 2007 -- Just before 9 a.m., they file into large, sometimes windowless rooms.
In some cases, they punch time cards; in others, they scribble their names on a sign-in sheet.
They take their places in plastic chairs either grouped around tables or scattered haphazardly.
Some immediately pull out crossword puzzles or books. Some knit. Others hold golf-putting contests. One takes out his guitar and strums.
One day last week, another, wearing a leotard and tights, spread out on the floor and stretched before practicing ballet against a wall in a corner.
Nearby, gazing out a window, a man slowly fell asleep, his head in his hands.
It's all in a day's work on the city payroll.
For seven hours a day, five days a week, hundreds of Department of Education employees - who've been accused of wrongdoing ranging from buying a plant for a school against the principal's wishes to inappropriately touching a student - do absolutely no work.
In an investigation inside the nine reassignment centers called "rubber rooms" where these employees are sent, The Post has learned that the number of salaried teachers sitting idly waiting for their cases to be heard has exploded to 757 this year - more than twice the number just two years ago - at a cost of about $40 million a year, based on the median teacher salary.
The city pays millions more for substitute teachers and employees to replace them and to lease rubber-room space.
Meanwhile, the 757 - paid from $42,500 to $93,400 a year - bring in lounge chairs to recline, talk on their cellphones and watch movies on portable DVD players, according to interviews with more than 50 employees.
David Pakter, 62, has been in a rubber room for a year for buying a plant for his school and giving students watches he'd made, he said.
The DOE would not discuss ongoing investigations.
Pakter, a former "teacher of the year" honored at City Hall during Rudy Giuliani's mayoral tenure, just bought a new Jaguar with his $90,000 salary for "doing absolutely nothing."
"It's a present from [Schools Chancellor] Joel Klein," Pakter said. "I want to teach, they won't let me teach, but they'll pay me enough to buy a car. Can someone explain this to me?"
Another rubber-room attendant said she was unaware of the reason she'd been assigned there for more than a month. Yet another, an Army reservist who spent almost 3½ years in a rubber room before he retired, begged to be able to go to Iraq instead of staying in DOE Siberia.
Sam Lazarus, a social-studies teacher and union rep at Bryant HS in Long Island City, said he and his spotless 23-year teaching record were shipped off to a Queens rubber room last spring that was so "filled to the rafters" that he was forced to sit in a plastic chair outside the room.
"I think I'm the only one who actually had a grievance to get into a rubber room," said Lazarus, who was in this "detention" for six weeks before accusations of verbally abusing a student were dropped.
Some say the teachers themselves are to blame - their union contract requires a hearing before any tenured employee can be fired.
"The reason the rubber room exists is because of worn-out and, quite frankly, irrelevant union contracts that do more to protect people's jobs than they do to protect kids," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, based in Washington, D.C.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09302007/news/regionalnews/why_is_the_city_paying_757_peo.htm?page=0
read the rest at link
:banghead: :mental:
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New York...
There it is.