Teachers union and city in talks to shrink rubber rooms
Department of Education and teachers union officials could have a deal within weeks that would shrink the number of teachers sitting in rubber rooms.
Sources within the United Federation of Teachers said that the two sides have been negotiating for several weeks outside of contract talks, which have stalled, but would not give any specifics about how the population of teachers in the rooms might be reduced.
The rubber rooms, technically called “reassignment centers,” are student-less classrooms where about 650 teachers and administrators accused of misconduct or incompetence report for duty every day as they wait to be officially charged or have their cases heard. The wait can sometimes stretch over years, during which teachers receive their full salaries. According to Chancellor Joel Klein, last year the city spent some $30 million covering these teachers’ salaries.
Following a New Yorker piece that slammed the UFT for making it extremely difficult to fire rubber room teachers, the rubber rooms and their unhappy inhabitants have become a political problem for the union. But they’ve also become a cost and an irritant to Klein, whose administration has only been able to fire three teachers for incompetence in the last two years.
City and union sources did not disclose how they are planning to drain the rubber rooms. But one relatively easy target could be the rubber room teachers who have been waiting for more than six months for the DOE to wrap up its investigations and charge them with something. Given the expense the city incurs each day these people wait to be charged and the fact that the contract spells out a six month limit for investigations, they could be returned to their classrooms or the investigations could be sped up.