New York City and its teacher unions have reached a deal to put an end to a bizarre and Kafkaesque system in which suspended teachers are placed in holding centers, dubbed “rubber rooms,” doing nothing on full pay in some cases for as long as 10 years.
The rubber rooms — so nicknamed after the padded cells of old-style mental hospitals — have become a symbol of the unacceptable face of the city’s education system, which is the largest in the US. Around 600 teachers are currently occupying the temporary reassignment centers, as they are officially known, in locations across the city, including a trailer site in Washington Heights.
From Monday to Friday during school hours the teachers sit in the rooms under instruction to do whatever they like, so long as it has nothing to do with teaching.
Some play Scrabble, read books or do yoga, others run small businesses on their laptops and many wile away the hours by sleeping.
All the occupants are all on full-pay, at a cost to the city of at least US$30 million a year. The reasons cited for their confinement to what has been described as purgatory or jail for teachers range from excessive lateness or absence, sexual misconduct with a student, physical abuse, incompetence or use of drugs or alcohol.
What the occupants all have in common is that they are waiting for the charges against them to be filed and then adjudicated, a state of limbo that often lasts for two or three years, and occasionally much longer.
In some cases, teachers have been known to wait for three years before they are told what they are alleged to have done wrong.
The education department and the unions have traditionally blamed each other: Management accused the unions of putting up so many barriers it becomes virtually impossible to sack bad or abusive teachers; the unions accused management of failing to invest in the resources needed to speed up the hearings process.
Present occupants of the centers will have to wait until September until the new system comes into effect, but when it does those with minor cases will be given non-teaching jobs inside schools. Anyone facing criminal charges will be sent home without pay and if sexual or financial misconduct is alleged they will be allowed to stay at home on full pay.
In new cases, charges must be brought within 60 days and hearings into their cases convened within a further 15 days of that, or the teacher will be entitled to return to the classroom.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS