Rubber rooms, in the eyes of the TAG beholders

The Teacher Advocacy Group NYC has put together a flyer about the rubber rooms.

I'm posting it here because you're not going to find it either on the UFT website or Edwize, which claims to be a union blog but is really just a Unity blog.


Quoting from TAG's email:

The Temporary Reassignment Centers have been relegated to the back of the bus in the struggle to preserve public education and the careers of the NYC public school teacher. But we are critical to the plan to dismantle and discredit public education. The TRCs are in the front line "representing" as we do the repository of arbitrary power of principals as memorialized in the 2005 UFT contract; "representing" as we do tangible evidence of the incompetence and moral turpitude of the NYC teacher;"representing" as we do the best PR tool Bloomberg-Klein have to overthrow tenure' 'representing' as we do the face of a union too cowardly to defend its members while they are in the school; representing as we do the means by which Bloomberg-Klein chill all opposition within the schools- chapter chair leaders included. And lastly, providing the back door to the creation of more ATRs — and we know what is going to happen to the ATRs.

Here's the text of the flyer they're getting out to press and public. Kudos to whoever put this together, because they're doing what union management is not doing: defining the stinking mess and getting the word out.

THE RUBBER ROOM: DOE’s DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

What is the ‘rubber room’?

Approximately 800 Department of Education teachers are warehoused in Temporary Reassignment Centers, known as rubber rooms. The DOE considers these individuals too dangerous to be around children, yet most will return to schools after languishing for months or years in off-campus sites.

Teachers receive full pay while waiting for the resolution of their cases. The financial costs are estimated as high as $65 million dollars; the human costs are seldom considered.

Reassignment Centers are called rubber rooms because doing nothing is maddening. Outwardly, teachers play cards, watch DVDs, knit, read books, and sleep. Inwardly, teachers lament the loss of successful careers and worry about uncertain futures. Feelings of fear, doubt and shame never subside.

Why are teachers removed?

Allegations of sexual misconduct, corporal punishment and other misconduct are so disturbing that the DOE banishes teachers to rubber rooms on just the word of a principal, teacher or student.

Certainly some teachers should not be in classrooms, but many charges against teachers are exaggerated or simply not true. For example, reporting unsafe conditions is insubordination; failing to immediately admit a late student to class is corporal punishment.

Principals frequently use false charges to retaliate against whistleblowers and to remove competent teachers who question the policies of the administration.

Reassigned teachers may also be charged with incompetence or be accused of crimes by outside agencies.

Incompetent teachers should be terminated, but many principals and assistant principals are not qualified to judge competence. Principals and assistant principals are required to have only three years of teaching experience. Possession of an administrative license does not guarantee knowledge of pedagogy.

The decision to remove a teacher is often based on personalities; a teacher who caters to the whims of the administration is rarely reassigned and never accused of incompetence.


Why do disciplinary proceedings take so long?

Education Law states that disciplinary proceedings against charged teachers must be completed within five months. The DOE and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) modified the proceedings. These modifications do not provide teachers with increased protection; instead they infringe on the rights of teachers and lengthen the process.

The DOE and the UFT agreed that teachers can be removed before charges are preferred. Teachers are supposed to be charged within 6 months of their removal, yet some teachers remain in the rubber room for years without charges.

The DOE and the UFT also denied teachers the right to choose arbitrators. A fixed number of arbitrators are assigned on a rotating basis, supposedly to accelerate the disciplinary proceedings. However, more arbitrators are needed, timeframes are ignored, and cases can last for years.

The accused teachers are not responsible for the delays and they can expedite cases only by admitting guilt and settling.

Teachers who are charged with crimes by an outside agency face similar obstacles. Prosecuting attorneys continually ask for postponements, claim they are ready to proceed, and then ask for additional postponements. The teachers are again powerless to hasten the process except by admitting guilt.


Is justice served?

Arbitrators are paid approximately $1,700 per day and must be approved by both the DOE and the UFT. Arbitrators have a huge incentive to please both sides.

The UFT is happy if teachers do not lose their jobs; the DOE is happy if the arbitrator renders any finding of guilt. Teachers are rarely terminated or exonerated. The decision of an arbitrator is very predictable: a finding against the teacher, a fine, and reassignment as an Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).

Teachers who become ATRs are substitute teachers permanently assigned to schools. They do not have programs and have little hope of returning to the classroom in a meaningful capacity. There are approximately 1,400 ATRs in the DOE. Most ATRs are tenured teachers with excellent records who lost jobs after schools were closed


Why does the process continue?

Principals who abuse the disciplinary process are not punished and they achieve their desired results: a troublesome teacher is removed and the remaining teachers are intimidated.

The DOE hopes that public opinion inflamed by the newspapers will result in the termination of ATRs. Mostly tenured teachers will be dismissed, and teachers without tenure are cheaper and easier to control.

The UFT is reluctant to protest the abuse of the disciplinary process. The UFT receives dues from over 2,000 ATRs and rubber room teachers, approximately $2.4 million annually. Positions for these teachers have been given to new hires and changing the system will cost the UFT money.

Teachers and students are hurt by the system, but neither group has a voice.

Parents and the public are kept in the dark and trust that policymakers will make the right decisions. So far they have not.

Here's a UFT link on rubber rooms posted last July, but be prepared. It's as rosy and upbeat as it is ludicrous, and if you need proof, try this sentence in the first paragraph:

In an important victory for members languishing unfairly in Department of Education temporary reassignment centers, the UFT and DOE have reached an agreement that will erase the backlog of teachers sent to a “rubber room” for alleged misconduct.

I especially choked on the words "victory" and "erase the backlog."

Here's an assignment for TAG, or for whoever knows anything about the rubber rooms: Is there anything in that post that's really doing some good for teachers assigned? Or is the whole thing one great big ill-conceived, poorly negotiated, and horrifically monitored screwup.

The lady doth protest, but for real?

After a summer of intense pressure on the union leadership, Randi Weingarten finally moved on the rubber room and ATR situations — too late for the most part, since careers were already severely damaged (or ended) and givebacks already contractualized.

Nevertheless, she seems to have gotten the message that the membership is fairly disgusted with her milquetoast response to the DOE’s continuously rotten treatment of its employees.

(Bravo, TAG and all the others who’ve been in her face on these issues for months now.)

Regardless of her motives for being somewhat dispassionate about the DOE's brutality for the past couple of years, Weingarten is now making a show of outrage by joining the Candlelight Vigil mounted by a disgusted teacher who was determined to “To Mourn the Death of Civil Rights and Due Process for New York City's 100,000 Dedicated Teachers,” even if he had to do it on his own. That’s how he announced it, and that’s what she couldn’t resist: the chance to look as if she really had our interests at heart. She quickly jumped on board and called everyone out to the Monday demonstration at Tweed “to protest the DOE’s creation of the Teacher Performance Unit and to call for respect for city teachers.”

Respect. It reminds me of the armbands campaign some years back calling for respect, and the brainstorming session on the same topic. (Was there more than one session? I didn't get invited back after the one I went to. Maybe they dropped it.) In case you ever thought so, you can't get respect just by demanding it.

We have called Weingarten a dissembler before, and we shouldn’t be fooled by her public indignation now. Most veteran teachers have seen her do this dance many times over, the making nice to the powers that be, and then the playing at being tough. She even said as much at the ATR meeting herself, when she talked about the periods she’s friendly with Klein alternating with the times they piss each other off.

If you want members to believe you're for real, you can’t do games. Your job is not to be nice or considerate, or collaborate with the bosses. Your job is to advance the interests of your members, and failing that, prevent a deluge of contractual givebacks and protect them legally and through protest from egregious administrative behavior. She's actually not done much of any of this.

If Weingarten were playing it straight with us, she’d have been standing up publicly to this chancellor all along and not waiting for us to call, nag, email, blog, or prod her, much less expose, parse, and debunk her public explanations and excuses every time he fires off another round of abuse. After all, this is the man who has pushed children, parents and staff off the board in the devilish game of monopoly he’s been playing with his corporate buddies at the expense of public education. If Weingarten were playing it straight with us, you'd feel her support in your bones.

Veteran members — not, of course, the Unity people, who have something tangible to lose if they don’t swim with the pack — have come to see Weingarten’s thrusts and feints for what they are: maneuvers to enhance her personal political position. It’s the newer members, and the passive ones, who have to listen up this time and not get sucked into thinking she is working for them.

Weingarten works for herself. She’s stayed in power so long because she’s a political animal who’s deft at what she does.

And what she does, as Norm Scott says in “UFT: Masters of Deflection,” is:

deflect people from taking action on their own or ... in concert with others... The goal is to stop anything from getting organized, and if the threat is serious enough, they may actually do something (or give the impression they are doing something).

Weingarten cancelled a long-planned rally in May that had the support of parents and community groups (see Kolodner’s account in The Chief). Why should we believe she’s being honest with us now at the Monday vigil when she sacked her own demonstration last spring and nixed an attempt by chapter leaders soon after to reinstate it? According to Kolodner, those people had been planning a protest against the reorganization even before the May 9th demonstration was announced. Where was Weingarten and the full force of the union presence then?

This the the key. Weingarten will do what is in Weingarten’s interest. She’ll make sudden announcements, move venue, call emergency meetings to push through her agenda, twist Roberts Rules, plant supporters to make her case, demean adversaries, or talk deep into the delegate assemblies to reduce the question period. She’s learned how to do all that, and she does it well.

What she hasn’t done is organize this union into a force to be reckoned with. And she hasn't figured out a way to tune into our anger and despair and use all of it to put this misanthropic BloomKlein machine back on the right course.