More teachers in New York in ‘rubber room’ limbo
Published 9:37 pm Sunday, May 4, 2008
NEW YORK — The number of city teachers yanked from their classrooms because of accusations of wrongdoing has doubled in four years, and some spend years collecting their salaries while awaiting disciplinary hearings, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Their pay costs the nation’s largest public school system an estimated $65 million a year, the Daily News reported.
Accused of offenses ranging from excessive lateness to sex abuse, an average of 700 teachers at any given time read magazines, play cards and nap in the “rubber rooms” — officially, Temporary Reassignment Centers, the newspaper reported. It cited city data.
The average accused teacher waits four months for investigators to decide whether to bring formal charges. If they do, it takes an average of nine more months for a hearing and another six months for a decision.
