I enjoy listening to NPR's "This American Life" podcasts, which I've subscribed to for a while now. One of the most bizarre things I've ever heard of in my life reared its head on this past week's show -- a segment about what New York City school teachers refer to as "Rubber Rooms." It appears on episode #350, entitled "Human Resources." And it's absolutely chilling.
Apparently the DoE operates a dozen "reassignment centers" for teachers that have been suspended from normal duties for a variety of reasons. Some of them clearly shouldn't be teaching at all -- they're there for insubordination, or for acting inappropriately (swearing in front of students, or totally losing their temper). But for whatever reason, the way these centers are operated is bizarre -- almost Kafkaesque.
Teachers basically sit in a room in an administrative building all day long. In some cases, for months or years, as the DoE negotiates with their union reps or their lawyers or whomever about what to do with them. In the interim, they collect a full paycheck, to just sit and stare at four walls day, after day, after day. Estimates run that about 700 (of approximately 70,000) NYC school teachers spend their days in these gulags. That's right -- a full 1 percent of the faculty of the NYC school system.
Basically, the teachers are being given what's the equivalent of in-school suspension for their infractions.
A DoE bureaucrat they interviewed used the standard refrain -- "think of the children, their safety is paramount" -- when asked to defend the existence of these "reassignment centers." And that's fine, especially when you're dealing with teachers who have been accused of outright damaging behavior with students.
But it's also being used to house teachers who have run afoul of the administration, who have pissed off the principal, for example, or who just may have said the wrong thing to the wrong person and ended up in trouble as a result.
But one way or the other, we're not talking about a quick process of appraisal, dismissal or reassignment here. They interviewed teachers that had spent incredible amounts of time in the centers -- one fellow said he taught for a month, and had spent four months since then in the Rubber Room.
That's just a broken, badly fucked up system that's wasting huge amounts of NYC taxpayer money. And whether it's bureaucratic bungling or union meddling or whatever, it ought to stop.
Sam Freedman is interviewed; he wrote a piece about this for The New York Times last October.
And it turns out the This American Life piece was inspired by a documentary that's in development.
