{"id":8081,"date":"2009-06-25T03:09:02","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T10:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8081"},"modified":"2009-06-25T03:09:02","modified_gmt":"2009-06-25T10:09:02","slug":"nyc-teachers-paid-to-do-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8081","title":{"rendered":"NYC Teachers Paid To Do Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AP has a story<\/a> about the New York City school system’s “rubber rooms” — the places where hundreds of teachers facing disciplinary hearings wait, doing no work but drawing full salaries. Sometimes this can go on for years.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract,” spokeswoman Ann Forte said. […]<\/p>\n

Many teachers say they are being punished because they ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the teachers blame the schools, the schools blame the teachers. Buried deep in the article, however, the real culprit is briefly mentioned:<\/p>\n

Once their hearings are over, they are either sent back to the classroom or fired. But because their cases are heard by 23 arbitrators who work only five days a month, stints of two or three years in a rubber room are common, and some teachers have been there for five or six. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why don’t they just hire a bunch of full-time arbitrators? Given the millions of dollars of potential savings, it seems silly not to hire the needed personnel.<\/p>\n

There’s an compelling episode of “This American Life<\/a>” focusing on life inside teacher purgatory.<\/p>\n

(Via<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The AP has a story about the New York City school system’s “rubber rooms” — the places where hundreds of teachers facing disciplinary hearings wait, doing no work but drawing full salaries. Sometimes this can go on for years. Because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}