Jamie, I can’t wait to find out how this story turns out. I am a teacher in a private school located in the Mid-Hudson Valley and I never heard of such a thing. How did you uncover such an atrocity? I teach in a private school and can speak with confidence that this is not going on in my school. However, I can’t say what is going on out in the so called “public” sector. Now you have sparked my curiosity. I do have contacts in the public sector and plan on asking them if they have heard of “rubber rooms.” I will keep you posted or feel free to contact me.

Hey, what happened to your family in CA w/ the fires ? you left us hanging, hope they are ok.

The whole rubber room and pay to boot is ridiculous. Just another example of our bureaucratic incompetence.

If they are accused of such things as sexually assaulting a child why would they be waiting for a hearing instead of being arrested and processed in the criminal justice system? That makes no sense to me.

Let them stay home, but continue to pay them. Everyone is entitled to their day in court AND all are innocent until proven guilty. Many other issues could be discussed concerning schools and teachers. Save that for another day.

So if the teachers are waiting in a “rubber room”, then are subs teaching their classes? It is not clear to me if the teacher (being held out) knows the “why”. Now as a parent I know of one or two teachers whom I’d wished could be held out of the classroom until my son was through their grade. I previously worked as a teachers aid in middle school , then for the high school, teachers were repremanded privately or the contract was not renewed. So what is the rubber room all about? You need to keep digging and find out then tell the rest of us!

As a former teacher and now a law student, I find this type of behavior by the school district to be totally and completely absurd. If these teachers have committed such crimes that warrant this type of punishment, then they need to suspend them from their positions or move on. I consider this false imprisionment!!!! These teachers are innocent until proven guilty. And the DOE has not proved any of these accusations.

I believe that John Stossel did a story on this a couple years ago. What he discovered was how difficult it was to actually fire a teacher with just cause….the unions’ flow charts were riduculous! It appears to be more cost effective for school districts to set up these “rubber rooms” rather than litigate, which is very sad for the innocent teachers stuck in there not able to clear their good name. But as long as districts are too scared to take on the teacher unions, I’m not sure they have many other options.

I know plenty of long time teachers who should never have been allowed to enter a classroom, and I know plenty of rookie teachers who were outstanding instructors who were able to convey a lot of information to young students very well. I also know the converse of both situations. So I think how long a person has been teaching is a weak point to make.

However, as a tax payer (thought not in New York) I think I would love to know what policies are on the books that encourage this type of costly expenditure.

Also, I would frankly love to know what (if any) opinion/input local Teacher’s unions have on the subject. This seems like the type of thing that Unions in my state were formed to deal with.

It’s so obvious, they are holding them in a poor environment to GET THEM TO QUIT.

Don’t believe for one minute. Why?? No proof. All hearsay. Why don’t you get some access to check this out yourself or drop it.

I think the DOE keeps the teachers there indefinately with pay to keep the following years budget from being reduced, Education bureaucrats are good at that sort of thing.

As for a speedy trial or resolution, of course that should happen, however, it is as much a teachers fault for sitting there two years as it is the DOE. Personally I would raise Holy Cow and certainly seek legal advice.

The opinion is mine, thanks for asking,
E. Art Barriere

I, too, have never heard of such a thing and have trouble understanding what’s going on here.
Sadly, your piece does nothing at all to illuminate whatever the problem might be.
I surmise from reading it that it is easier for certain school systems to simply put “problem” teachers “on ice” than it is to fire them.
Since any criminal accusations would have been referred to the police, that leaves ‘”administrative” issues. Which implies difficulties vis a vis Union practices and School System rules.
If thats the case then neither School System nor Union officials are doing their jobs and all of them should be fired.

I believe it…the education system in the US has been corrupted by the Union. I received a degree in education and got 2 eye openers during student teaching. First was a new English teacher in my school who was doing great and her students did very well and was well liked by the students. The faculty who was older teachers with substantially less skills than her made sure the young teacher was NOT given tenure and told to teach elsewhere. Union job security at it’s best. I remember that poor girl leaving the school district crying.

The second eye opener was when I was called down to the principals office and accused of being a heroin addict by one of my students. The student told her mom one day after school that I had track marks on my arms and wore sweaters to cover them up. By the next morning nearly all the parents in town were asking the principal for my removal. As I explained to the principal I wore sweaters because we taught up near the Canadian border in NY state and it was often cold. I took off my sweater and showed the lack of “track marks”.

I was cleared of wrong doing, yet it became evident to me how this system worked. If that young gal had claimed sexual assualt my life would have been over, even if proven innocent. I decided not to use my teaching degree or certificate to this very day due to these events. Sadly I am not doing what I had loved to do, and many students are missing the opportunity to learn music from me.

The education system in the US is broken, most of it due to the Union and to bad parents who won’t let teachers teach properly. Dear God don’t lay a hand on precious little angel who will not sit down or stay quiet in class. Don’t even think about taking a child out of a class due to his/her behavior. Don’t grade poorly a student who just refuses to do the work, the students need to keep a good average to progress to the next grade lvl (I had grades of students who didnt show for class nor showed for makeup tests changed by the principal to passing grades).

The students KNOW the above and use it daily to their perceieved advantage. Shame that the students perceptions don’t look further down the road to see what the lack of a good education leads to.

I will applaud the day when a president finally forces positive change upon the school systems nationwide despite what the unions want. Hopefully it will encompass all areas of the education system and even help root out bad administrators and faculty.

Till that day, I will continue to not teach.

I don’t want bad teachers in the system anymore than you want them. The problem is, how do you define a “Bad Teacher” especially in this Reign of Terror that has been fostered by Klein and Bloomberg?

I don’t think you would find one teacher from my school who knows me who would say that I’m a bad teacher. From what I can see in the Rubber Rooms, its true of many there as well. How does a former Teacher of the Year (David Pakter) decorated personally by Former Mayor Gulliani end up in a Rubber Room? Is a teacher a “Bad Teacher” if they put on their makeup incorrectly, or if they pat a student on the shoulder to reassure them during a test, or if they are thrown in a Rubber Room by a vindictive principal for trying to expose corruption in their school?

Of course there are totally unacceptable behaviors by a teacher; statutory rape, sexual violation, physical abuse of any kind, racism of any kind. But what about the one emotionally disturbed student or faculty member who falsely accuses a teacher because he/she has some personal vendetta against that teacher. If I arbitrarily accuse you of being a mass murderer without any justification, should you be detained in a prison? If an unethical politician uses such people as pawns to press false charges against educators in order to achieve the politician own nefarious ends, should we send such people to “Rubber Rooms”? What about the politician who control the press so that the only opinions printed are their own, while the opportunity for rebuttal by the accused is next to impossible. Has our society also run amok in believing that any teacher accused of improper conduct is automatically guilty? When was the last time you heard something good about a teacher in the media? Why aren’t teachers being portrayed they way they used to be in “Good-bye Mr. Chips, “To Sir With Love or Stand” and “Deliver”?

This is what frightens me. Are there no longer any good teachers out there or is the profession simply being made to look bad by those in society who believe that an educated populace and the educators that promote that education are a threat to societal control?

So until we can define who is really a “Bad Teacher” and who is just a political or age discriminated prisoner the question becomes moot.

Leonard Brown, Ph.D.

The rubber rooms are a disgrace. The poor physical conditions, the long wait for a dubious justice …these things demoralize not only the teachers who must inhabit the rubber rooms, but also all of those who do not.

Vulnerable as we are to the accusations of children, the sometimes arbitrary actions of supervisors, and the larger cultural system that would as soon hang a veteran teacher for using a swear word as exonerate a celebrity for murder, New York teachers understand the rubber rooms to be the unspoken threat, ever present, hovering about even the most innocuous of school transactions. At any time, we feel, their doors may open for us – and shut behind. Our fear is reflected in the DOE’s recent survey, which showed that a third of responding teachers do not trust their principal. But the fear, unfortunately, goes much further than that.

And, of course, schools where teachers are afraid are schools that are not doing everything they can for children.

Teachers deserve good conditions and speedy justice. Its good for teachers, and its good for kids. It’s time for change.

The rubber rooms are a discgrace. The poor physical conditions, the long wait for a dubious justice …these things demoralize not only the teachers who must inhabit the rubber rooms, but also all of those who do not.

Vulnerable as we are to the accusations of children, the sometimes arbitrary actions of supervisors, and the larger cultural system that would as soon hang a veteran teacher for using a swear word as exonerate a celebrity for murder, New York teachers understand the rubber rooms to be the unspoken threat, ever present, hovering about even the most innocuous of school transactions. At any time, we feel, their doors may open for us – and shut behind. Our fear is reflected in the DOE’s recent survey, which showed that a third of responding teachers do not trust their principal. But the fear, unfortunately, goes much further than that.

And, of course, schools where teachers are afraid are schools that are not doing everything they can for children.

Teachers deserve good conditions and speedy justice. Its good for teachers, and its good for kids. It’s time for change.

The vast majority of teachers in the rubber rooms are teachers who ticked off their principals because they either stood up for their contractual rights, are whistle-blowers on some really horrendous evils going on in their schools (grade tampering, teacher/student “liasons”, etc.) or, as we are now seeing as a growing trend, older teachers who (in the eyes of the administration) cost the school too much in salary. That a teacher, or anyone, can be charged with a crime without being told what the charges are, without being told how long they have to sit there, without being able to consult consul, without the right to a speedy “trial” is Kafkaesque in the extreme.

Principals have way too much power. They are people, nothing more, and in many cases (the new Principals’ Academy) don’t even have teaching experience. Yet they can, on a whim, destroy a teacher’s career with baseless accusations.

Any teacher, nay, anyone at all, who poses an immediate danger to a child, must be immediately removed from contact with children. But those teachers are, thankfully, few and far between. forcing a teacher to sit month after month because he/she didn’t “get along” with an administrator, is absurd.

To begin with, this is a situation the teachers have set up for themselves in their contract negotiations, designing their agreements with the labor board to disallow reasonable methods of terminating them.

They sit there because they’re drawing full pay for doing nothing, waiting for the problem to go away, not because they’re waiting for “someone else” to act on it. It’s almost impossible to fire them without incurring the wrath of the National Teachers Association. Believe me, the $30M is nothing by comparison.

Your representation of these teachers as victims is absolutely ludicrous. Certainly they may be bored, but to contend that teachers making $40K plus per year, can’t afford an attorney is ridiculous! Worse case is you quit and go find another job – what kind of a childish moron would allow his/herself to be committed to “rubber room” indefinitely, and just report there and read the newspaper cover to cover every day?

This story is a stretch, and you should be embarrassed for attempting to present it in such a one sided light. These people are not “victims”. They are taking advantage of a system they created for themselves, and they’re using you to try to fudge it a whole lot better.

Maybe it would be better for them if we just let them stay at home watching daytime tv or doing yard work, or maybe even go on vacation, permanently. We could have their checks forwarded to the Mexican Riviera for them, and they could lounge at the Copa Cabana working on their sun tans for two years.

Were that the case, I doubt there would be much grumbling about the pace of the resolution of their offense. More likely these poor indigent teachers would find a way to fork over a few bucks to an attorney to ask for continuances.

Give us a break!

WOW !!! This is the first I have heard of this story. I am currently in school working on my Education degree and I am still scared . Things like this make you stop and say “should I really do this?”..I waited 12 years after I started college to work on education (althought it was my first choice) because of conversations I had at that time with teachers and yet here again…why would anyone want to put themselves in a position where they are more liable or more criminal then the average person. Teachers are held to a higher standard and I do agree with that, but to treat these teachers as criminals without any recourse in un American. I hope that as this plays out those who are unjustly charged are able to recoup in dollars what they lost in heart. Trust me takes alot of heart and passion to want to teach the children of today and we all know it isn’t to get rich. Wonder where all the good teachers are…..they are getting other degrees.

You’re meeting with Randi Weingarten?

Our “leader”? You mean the who has been SILENT on this issue and a whole lot of other abuses on the profession while she clambers to amass other unions under her umbrella and for leadership at the national level?

If you are going to bother to interview her, ask her why she hasn’t stepped up to the plate sooner. Why did it take all this barrage of criticism on the net to get her to act on our behalf?

Please: before you think about twisting stories against us: Senior teachers not only have state certification, but most have many credits on top of their Masters. So when Klein/Bloomberg set out to marginalize people in these fiercely malicious ways, it’s mostly to get our big salaries out of the system.

Look who’s teaching in the schools after 5 years of this threatening behavior. They’ve decimated the ranks of the experienced teachers, and the schools are manned by a large number of trainees, many on the way to full certification but not there yet. Untenured yet, they are perfect for DOE who is out to bust the union and downgrade the profession.

Here’s a sample of what I’ve already written about her leadership, and as you know, I’m not the only teacher who is disgusted with our union representation. We know they’re taking our dues to money, but we’re hardly getting the representation we need from them.

———————————————————————————————
IS THE WORD “PREVARICATOR” POLITICALLY INCORRECT?

If what NY1 reports she said is really true (and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t, is there?) — Randi Weingarten should be growing a nice long nose by now:

“We have to attract and recruit and nurture teachers in order to get the best and the brightest, not only to get them to come, but stay.”

WHAT ?
Attract them and recruit them, yes. But nurture them?

When was the last time you “nurtured” a teacher, Randi?

Was it when you cut our summers a little shorter? or when you incrementally allowed a 5-period teaching day to turn into a 6-period one, which calculations showed hardly made a dent in take-home pay? (I think some actually thought it didn’t even equal what we had before.)

Was it when you agreed to enforced “Staff Development,” as if teachers were still students and need to be “developed”? Did you even think of using another name for the kind of in-service sessions that keep professionals abreast of things, like “seminars,” “forums,” or just plain old “conferences”? I bet you didn’t insist on that terminology because you don’t even think of us as professionals — unlike yourself, of course, who is in a “real” profession, like law. (Who’s ever heard of a lawyer or a doctor or even a middle-manager being “staff developed”?)

Did you nurture us when you made us babysit the cafeterias?
Or supervise the halls, losing a chance to sit down for a couple of minutes and becoming the butt of all the abuse dished out by obstreporous teenagers along the way?

Was it when you weakened the grievance procedure?

Was it when you’ve never really showed any outrage about the flagrant and system-wide mendacity in observation reports? Some people call it harassment, and some people know it’s being done to get the senior salaries out of the system.

Was it when you didn’t protect us from the actuality or even the threat of what’s been going on all these years in the teacher detention centers, where some don’t even know why they’ve been put there, and others are told they can’t lean against the wall, or use their laptops or go to the bathroom without a security officer accompanying them? Is this is your idea of “nurturing” teachers?

Was it when you made no concerted effort to save our careers when the city was turning subjects mandated by state into mere recommendations? That meant even more music, art, drama, dance, foreign language, and library postions being closed down. (For the record, I hated being forced to teach elementary school music, on one day’s notice mind you, when my position was shut down several years ago, and I can’t tell you what I think of being an ATR now. This is most certainly not my vision of what I thought I’d be doing as a senior teacher, but it certainly was yours until we started fussing about it. In fact, it still is: your people are saying even now: “You still have your job, don’t you.”)

Nurture? Never.

Whether Weingarten’s values are skewed or whether she’s not been savvy enough to stand up to some political foes who do not care one whit about the common man, she broke this union — by maneuvering in all kinds of ways to get the votes to go her way at the delegate assemblies, by handling individual problem cases one by one and not fighting for whole categories of abuse, by manipulating Robert’s Rules more times than one can count, by forgetting altogether about building union from the ground up and taking her authority from the membership not just from her lackeys (especially the really thuggish ones), and now —

— by negotiating, in stealth, a hugely objectionable initiative, the nuanced merit pay plan, which goes contrary not only to what teachers stand for but strikes at the heart of what public education should be about.
[www.underassault.blogspost.com]

I don’t believe this “Rubber Room” story at all. When I was working in a high school – one of the male teachers was accused of touching a female student inappropiately. Many months down the road, while attending a meeting in the superintendants office, there was this teacher sitting at a desk reading a newspaper with his feet up on the desk getting his paycheck as he is doing nothing but resting. This happened in Queens, New York. Do you really think any human would let themselves be put in a rubber room!

Teachers deserve fair and speedy justice without the indignity of cramped and dirty rubber rooms. We should remember that many, many of our suspended teachers have served our students, and served them well for many years. Rare is the case of the truly heinous crime against our students, and if such cases are currently in the rubber room, then the shame is even greater that the DOE has not prosecuted them.

But more often, we are looking at members who served children wonderfully for 20 years.

Suddenly, these long-time teachers who have changed thousands of children’s lives for the good, and done more meaningful and positive work than a thousand lawyers and ten thousand hedge fund investors – find themselves to be pariahs because –what? They broke up a fight between two students (“Never break up a fight,” we are warned, “Or you’ll find yourself accused!!”)?

Or think of it this year, Mr .Colby. Thirty teenagers. Many hours a day. Twenty years. And then 30 seconds in which you lose it all. Off to the rubber room. Gone is your reputation. You never get it back.

No wonder no one wants to teach these days.

Your story doesn’t mention the fact that many teachers are also sent to the rubber room for political reasons. Administrators, many of whom are related, often work together to discredit teachers who are vocal about issues of professionalism and the new micromanagement. These administrators are not beneath harassment and even perjury as they work together to build their own kingdoms.

It is also well known that the arbitration process is wieghed heavily against the teacher, driving out dedicated people who devoted their lives to helping underprivilaged children.

Many educators are losing their right to their full pensions where the significant benefits are backloaded to beyond 20 years.

The average age of a teacher accused is over 40 and 18 years of service.

This is our thanks for our dedication and career of altruistic hardship. We started teaching when the pay was low, during the Reagan era when most were going into business. This, now is our gold watches of appreciation.

To interview Randi Swinegarden is laughable. It is akin to interviewing Marshall Petain on the Vichy response, to sending people in cattle cars East to the crematoriums.

The Doe and the Union don’t want senior teachers who might question idiotic tasks. The system wants underpaid inexperienced mindless drones who will follow the stupidest orders without question.
Your childrens minds are being molded by their intellectual inferiors. This is a true case of mindless brainwash education. Long live Franz Kafka

To Dolores at 12:18:

We KNOW that rubber rooms operate this way, because we have colleagues IN THEM and being told things like: don’t lean your head against the wall to fall asleep; can’t go the bathroom unescorted by a security guard, no laptops.

You’ve got to understand WHY these people in the rubber rooms hang in there til the case is over. If your salary is on the high side, let’s say over $80,000, and you are close to retirement, or even if you are not so close to retiring, you have fewer choices job-wise than a younger person. You still have to earn a living, yet lots of jobs are not available to you when you’re older. So, you sit it out there at the DOE’s discretion for a year or two, and more likely than not, you get your job back, with no break in salary or seniority. Thr choices these senior people have are really limited. Not to mention that many of them really still want to work with kids until they themselves choose to retire.

This is the result of a system that is not only broken, but entirely corrupt. The UFT and the NYC Department of Education should be brought up on Federal Racketeering charges. And who better to know about this matter than NYC Public School Chancellor Joel Kein, a former Federal prosecutor, who failed to bring Microsoft to task on precisely the same violations?

It is very clear that both organizations are monopolies, both benefit financially from this inhuman treatment of dedicated educators.

When will the people guilty of this wickedness be brought to the attention of the general public?

This is supposed to be a country predicated on the rule of law. Quite frankly, there is nothing moral or legal about either organization.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E6D61030F936A25752C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

If you think this is an accident, take a trip down memory lane to this N.Y. Times article. URL listed above.

To Dolores, who says she doesn’t believe this “Rubber Room” story at all.

Believe it, because we know people who are sitting in them and tell us what’s going on.
You can’t lean your head against the wall, you can’t use your laptops, and they make the security guard accompany you to the restroom. And some really do not know why they’ve been put in there, which seems to me totally against the “spirit” of Amendment VI of the Bill of Rights. Of course that document refers to criminal cases, and the vast majority of RR cases do not fall into that category because the teachers return to their classrooms when their stint is over, not to jail.

The important bits in Amendment VI:
….. the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial …. and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Dear Ms. Colby,

I hold a Ph.D. in English. I have taught college and joined Los Angeles Unified School District in September 2000. I have taught English at Chatsworth High School and Reseda High School.

At Chatworth, the principal used students with significant discipline challenges against me to charge me with an Unsatisfactory Act. The prinicpal recommended 3 days suspension. In order to avoid costs to the Disctrict and the union, I settled for a one-day suspension without pay and agreed to transfer to Reseda High School to teach a literacy intervention class.

How long did it take? From December of 2005 to June of 2006. The “rubber run” consisted of a bungalow on the big campus of Birmingham High School and a magnet site. We got to move around more freely, walk the grounds, or sit in our cars. I am never atonished anymore when the District assigns me somewhere where I cannot teach.

LAUSD is ripe territory for your investigation. Wonder how much of the taxpayers money they waste?

Yours truly,

Robert E. Seaman, Ph.D.
2320 Lingard St.
Lancaster, CA 93535

I am a competent teacher of 20 years. I was rated unsatisfactorialy last academic year by a ‘”failing Principal” of a failing High School in the Chelsea area of Manhatten because I am outspoken about issues regarding the breaking of Federal and State Laws for Special Education students. I may well find myself reassigned to “the rubber room”. It does not matter that my school can not staff it’s Special Education department and that I am the only one qualified to teach a foreign langauge and that I am a male with experience which is sorely needed at the High School level. My skunk of a Principal is out to get me even if he has to make things up since I am never late or absent to work and I can teach and do conduct myself professionally at all times.
My power mad Principal is desparate to have me reassigned. It does not matter that the children will not have a permanent foreign language teacher. It does not matter that my classes will fall apart in having different substitute teacher every day he is looking to get me out of his building.
Now, I have a number of questions:
1. Where is my union to protect me?
2. Why hasn’t the Department of Education closed this failing school?
3. Where is the “accountability” that Chancellor Klein is talking about?
4. What happened to my Constitutional rights?

PS I will keep you posted when I get to the rubber room.

I was in a Los Angeles Unified School District rubber room from December of 2004 to April of 2005 for an Unsatisfactory Act complaint by the principal. Even if he had won outright, the principal himself only recommended 3 days of unpaid suspension. In order to save taxpayers money, I settled for a 1-day suspension and a transfer.

Like easy-going California, the rubber room I occupied was a bungalo. And we wandered about the grounds outside in the sunshine. Kind of like a vacation. The lore around the room was that someone had spent three years there.

The main reason why so many dedicated teachers suffer such costly indignities is that many principals and assistant principals are incompetent and punish those teachers who embarrass them professionally. Kind of like a political prisoner holding area.

It’s probably a concoction produced by the District/Union monopoly, as someone suggested above.

It’s big, smelly, and costs a lot of $ to maintain, and students ultimately lose out.

Empathetic, the previous blogger is dead wrong. Few teachers come out of this unscathed.

1. There are very few all out acquittals

2. Most teachers either retire before they are even charged or pay exorbitant fines which include an admission of guilt.

3. The D.O.E. can take $800 per mos. from your check (After taxes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) for a year or two.

4. Many teachers sleep in the rubber room because they resort to psychriatric medication to deal with the shame, despair, depression, and pressure. Good people take it the hardest.

5. Even teachers who havn’t been charged have been taken out of schools by ambulance due to high blood pressure, mini strokes and the like.

6. Teachers, their families, and friends are Republicans in the making because the experience of dealing with such corrupt fiends instructs them that it really is, “Every man for himself!”

7. Children will not have the memory of Shanker to remember, only the image of their persecuted, broken parents.

8. Meanwhile, the administrators, arbitrators, and lawyers get rich.

Dear Justice, not Just Us:

Please try to be comforted by knowing that you’ve company to the tune of hundreds, if not thousands of teachers who are in your position, have been, or will soon be. Education is NOT what is on the agenda these days.

As for your questions:

1. If by “the union,” you mean those who wear suits to work, collect double pensions, and have expense accounts, free cell phones, etc. . . . well, they have reason to support the policies inflicted upon teachers.

2. Schools are programmed to fail so that privatization of the former public school system can step up its pace.

3. “Accountability” is one of the many doublespeak words and phrases used to fool whomever can be fooled.

4. Teachers, quite plainly, have no constitutional rights so long as teachers, as a body, do not reclaim them.

I hope you DO NOT end up in a rubber room. If you do, please let us know here immediately.

Take extra good care of yourself. With all of your commitment, time, sacrifice, love, caring, effort, you’re a very rare and special person: a career teacher from the days when teaching was a noble profession.

Frunabulax

To Aritha,
My advice is, that before you commit to a lifetime of being treated like garbage and subjected to the whims of incompetent administrators, get out of this profession. This is just tip of the iceberg. Do you want to be blamed for the continuous watering down of standards? Do you want the responsibilities of the parents on your shoulders? It used to be a noble profession. Now it is the profession that everyone loves to hate.
There is no other profession that so called educated educators are sent to rubber rooms and treated like criminals. The loss of your civil rights is untenable. There is no reason to be treated like a dog when you are trying to help society. Teachers have become the patsy’s for all that is wrong in our society. You will never be able to teach. Instead, you will have to learn to spout from a script, while some sycophant of the principal is furiously jotting down notes in your room, looking for an excuse to give you an unsatisfactory rating. The administration will lie and falsify “evidence” to take away your teaching license. The administration will subborn perjury to ruin your career. None of your colleagues and friends will ever believe you. They will think that you did something wrong. The educational system wants mindless drones that will carry out the ridiculous demands and orders of their mindless and evil administrators. Do not look to your union to help you. They are worse than the system that you work for. They falsely puport to serve your interests, while they bargain away your rights to serve their own interests. The teachers unions are no more than dues collection organizations
You have no prayer of ever being able to teach in the manner that you were taught. Instead, so called theorists, who have not been in the classroom will impose their stupid theories on you. The methodology will be up to your idiotic administrators. Individuals, who themselves could not teach and got out of the classroom to terrorize teachers.
The Rubber Room is something that is not for any decent self respecting human being. If you are in the teaching career you cannot just walk out of that situation. Most falsely believe that there will be some kind of justice when their case is heard. Sadly, the justice will be like that in the Dreyfuss trial.
This is purely a matter of the bottom line. Between the Mega Corporations and the Education Departments of a given locale, the consesus is churn them and burn them. Get rid of senior teachers and cause the system to fail. This will ensure speeding up the inevitable privatization of the last democratic bastion in our society, public education. The dumbing down of the population serves the power elite and the corporate interests. Docile and narcotized drones who will not question orders. They will serve the future which is looking very ugly.
Ask yourself if you seriously want a life of pain and poverty, and a part in what amounts to the destruction of our society.

Three years in the rubber room after my first stint two years earlier, I am more than qualified to talk about it. In addition to mine, my website http://WWW.TEACHERABUSE.COM tells other people’s stories and much more. I am inviting you to visit it for more insight into this obscenity.

Perhaps a more fitting survey question would be: “Should the Administrators be the Ones Serving in the Rubber Rooms?”

Remember: It is the administrators who are involved in daily cover-ups, who finagle the figures and doctor the records, who control the flow of information, who are accorded virtual immunity for any and all malfeasance and misfeasance by Chancellor Klein in order to maintain the “Public Trust” and confidence in the system. It is the adminsitrators who conduct the needless, useless and gratuitous daily abuse of teachers in accordance with the ill advised and inappropriately applied corporate philosophy and theory that management and pedagogical staff must be on adverserial terms in order to function at optimal levels of productivity.

Take notice: Public School classrooms are NOT Wall Street offices. Many schools have students where the vast majority of them come from dysfunctional homes, are horribly ill prepared for
learning in a social environment and have learning problems and behavioral issues. Parents are often non-responsive to teacher outreach and good faith overtures, except when they come to school to threaten the teachers. What is needed is a collegial atmosphere and congenial environment, not a “I’ll get you” or a “gotcha” work environment, which is the vert first thing Tweed established. In 99% of Public Schools, clasroom discipline and school safety are in sorrowful conditions. Anyone reporting this is guarateed a frame-up to the rubber room. And the public doesn’t have a clue as to who the true heroes are and who the real villains are.

Finally, most teachers sent to the rubber room are there simply because they reported their own administrators for misconduct or corruption. Those same administrators who themselves could not
make it in the classroom as teachers, who left the classroom at the first possible opportunity, who formed political relationships that made them administrators –are the ones who need to spend time in the rubber room contemplating their moral dillemas, not the vast majority of highly dedicated, pedagogically trained, and extremely hard working teachers with advanced academic degrees and professional certification who are battered around by vestigial hierarchs.

Finally, a thought to ponder: Why is it in Asians societies and cultures where teachers are revered and respected, that their students are leading the world in math and science achievement scores? Whereas, in the four largest school districts in the US, where unruly students and abusive administrators rule, nearly 70% of the students are not reading at grade level and the US inner-city public school system is the laughing stock of the third world. Does anyone really think or believe that placing teachers in rubber rooms for reporting corruption and the conditions which lead to this sorrowful situation is going to cure this systemic shame of the nation?

As a consultant/advocate for parentadvocates.org and now the UFT, assigned to help teachers re-assigned to the “rubber rooms” of the NYC BOE, I know what this nightmare is all about. I have visited all the “rubber rooms” and for four years I have listened to the nightmarish tales of teachers placed there. When Mayor Bloomberg began his new career, as oversight manager of the largest public education system in the US, he wanted to remove sexual predators and child molesters from the classroom, and he wanted to do it quickly, to please the public. His political agenda was to set up an “EDUSTAT” system similar to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s police “COMSTAT” that cleaned up crime on the streets of New York City.
At first, this was well received by everybody – the public holds teachers to a high standard, as they should, and no one wants harm to come to a child while in school or out, by anyone. The problem is, Mayor Mike and his subordinates, Dennis Walcott and Joel Klein to name a few, looked the other way when administrators took the removal process to an unfair and lawless level. You see, without accountability and/or accountability to anyone, Principals who dont like someone – whether or not he/she is too old, receiving too high a salary, has some kind of disabling condition that necessitates extra help or budget money, or hair the wrong color (it doesn’t matter what the “crime” is), it is very easy to pick up the telephone to say to the online reporting center (OORC), “John Doe hit a child today, and I have to remove him/her” . The Principal then simply writes up the incident – whether it happened or not – and emails it in. Then the Special Commissioner’s Office and/or the Office of Special Investigations steps in and rounds up “witnesses” who suddenly remember seeing something, with alot of help from the investigator. The teacher has no chance to deend him/herself because the investigation is always kept secret even from the victim, who is not permitted any contact with the school or students. He/she is doomed, and then sent to a rubber room to await the end of his/her career, financial freedom, salary, life, etc. The teacher knows that hhe/she cannot do anything to stop this.

Many teachers have no idea why they have been forced to leave their classrooms, and sit in limbo until SCI or OSI come up with something. Other teachers know that the principal wanted to get them out in order to give the position to their neice, nephew, son, friend, politician’s relative.

We need to return this process to a just process that recognizes due process and the rule of law, and someone must be at the top who provides this process with compliance with the law, accountability, integrity, and the people who are thrown out like dirt, a whole lot of sympathy, kindness, and a good ear.

WHY IS THE CITY PAYING 757 PEOPLE TO DO NOTHING. You missed the point. I spent many months in a rubber room after being falsely and unfairly accused.by a clearly delusional and disturbed pupil who claimed that I “looked deeply in her eyes”, across a crowded classroom,during a journal-literature lesson. And this,after 35 years of unblemished service. Removed from the classroom and sent to Linden place in Queens I was suddenly aloft and facing pending charges ,sent to a holding cell crowded with teachers from all walks ,also charged with similar frivolous and goofy charges. It was,truly a detention of a professional Union. The psychological damage of sudden detention for months, and for some ,years, in a crowded holding pen with dozens more, does and did enough damage to those around me ,all accomplished and dedicated teachers.This daily inglorious restraint destroyed all our teaching muscles and challenged our morale. Eventually, it forced me and other senior teachers to resign .”We can make these charges all go away,if you resign”,is what DOE attorney,Fox told me and others;where’s the due process in that?. Your article neglected to investigate the source of Michael Bests ire and rancor at teachers. These suddenly burgeoning rubber rooms are illegal violations of Civil Liberties and due process. I observed that swift fair adjudication and fair treatment was given to much younger teachers accused of similar charges.They didn’t languish for long months or years for adjudication and were treated fairly. Senior teachers,as a group were forced out; could this reflect a systemic move by the State Legislature and State Senate to balance the State budget by removing senior staff ,everywhere,or is this Mayors rancor at the UFT? We have been abandoned by our union and are forced into a semblance and a cynical facsimile of due process. Who ordered this sudden unfair treatment that unfairly brushes all rubber room teachers with the same punitive broad stroke and has doubled the rosters of detained and tightly corralled teachers is as important as who allows these rooms to exist and persist . No other so-called professional Union would tolerate such treatment of its members;Paul Schroeder

——————————————————————————–
See what’s new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage.

——————————————————————————–
See what’s new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage.

Here is a documentary someone is apparently doing on the rubber room:
http://www.rubberroommovie.com/

Gosh….. I don’t know what is worse…. A rubber room, or just being suspended with pay and not
knowing what is happening to your career. I am a teacher recently falsely accused of spanking
a child in my class by a new assistant ( 8 days in my room) who wanted to be the teacher and not be a one on one for a special needs child. She turned me in to the principal for the spanking although she states she didn’t see it, that I told her I did it?????? WHAT……. I was in shock when this came up on Nov. 7th. I have been suspended since then. Recently talked with Dept of Child serv. with my attorney. They are going to close the report with minimal suspicon that child abuse happened. I asked based on what? She said, the childrens statements??? This is a special needs class, K-3rd grade. There is no witness, and I have four assistants that have worked with me over the last 2 years that will testify that there has never been abuse in my class…. but she won’t talk with them???? I am losing it…. it has ruined my carreer, my life, my self esteem, and most of all my desire to work in the school system at all. I will fight this to the end, but doubt I will go back to teaching special needs again. How sad, because I really enjoy these students and have always felt that they are the children that need the good teachers…… Everyday is a struggle for me, I have wanted to “end it” many times, as it is such a horrible position to be in.

I was sent to the rubber room for 3 months based on false allegations by a student fo 10 years old. His parent never bothered to make a complaint. Later I was placed back to the school without being charged or tried for any offenses. I was sent to the rubber room because the principal wanted to retaliate me for my previous file of complaint against her.

The DoE investigator blatantly fabricated the evidences in his report, the principal gave me a negative performance rating based on the fabricated report. I would say that 20% percent or less teachers in the rubber room belong to stay there, the rest of them should not be there at all. It is the result of new policy of the DoE and our Union’s inability or unwillingness to defend its members.

I am an inmate of the Bronx rubber room and I am a new member of this prison that the DOE has locked me up in for being an honest and caring teachers assistant. I blew the whistle and I got locked up here. Tax payers have no idea what we are being paid to do. I hate being in this place but most of the teachers and staff here, love it. They have completed their master’s degrees in here, they sleep, eat, wake up and go for long walks, play chess, checkers, workout, or just read and relax. These people are living it up in these rubber rooms and I hate it because I am missing the children. The children that I was working with are special education kids and I had them for almost two years and they are graduating and I cannot even see them or talk to them and yet the teacher that I reported is of course still working with the same group of children because she has been a teacher in that school for 8 years and she kisses up to the principal by helping in the cheating scam that they have in that school. They cheat during state tests and this teacher has done it and I am witness to it but do they believe me? No, they through me in the rubber room and made up some false allegation about me. I am just a powerless Paraprofessional controlled by the NYC Department of Education run under Bloomberg/Klein. This entire ordeal has made me so sick that sometimes I wake up and get physically sick and can’t make it to the rubber room. Then I get phone calls from the Office of Special Investigators telling me that if I do not show up at the rubber room I could be charged with being AWOL. I have never in my life wanted to join the Military and now I am being treated as if I have joined some kind of organization which has me totally puzzled. The people at the Bronx rubber room are very afraid of the media and they really hate whistleblowers. I have to be watching my back because already I have been confronted several times by teachers that have had the whistle blown on them, and they do not like me at all. How can they do this to people? As I said, most of the inmates at 501 Courtlandt love being there and have actually been found innocent and intentionally messed up again just to be in the rubber room. This is strictly confidential and please do not use my name.