New York Teachers Paid To Do Nothing: 700 Of Them
KAREN MATTHEWS 06/22/09 06:20 PM ET Associated Press
NEW YORK — Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.
Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" _ off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.
The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues _ pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.
"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."
Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.
Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.
"It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.
City officials said that they make teachers report to a rubber room instead of sending they home because the union contract requires that they be allowed to continue in their jobs in some fashion while their cases are being heard. The contract does not permit them to be given other work.
Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said the union and the Department of Education reached an agreement last year to try to reduce the amount of time educators spend in reassignment centers, but progress has been slow.
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huffingtonpost.com
7 Child Predators Protected by American Teachers Unions
by Megan Fox
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A coach counts on his union to cover up sex crime allegations –>
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They reached an agreement with the coach and his union: He would quit, and the district would drop its investigation and not disclose his misconduct to potential employers.
The leftist public teachers union lobbied on his behalf to keep the sexual abuse of a minor “undisclosed” to future employers and the school agreed.
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On the stand, Deming didn’t deny many of their accounts but gave a positive spin. He said he didn’t squeeze girls repeatedly or too hard,
He was acquitted. The high school fired him, but he was put on paid leave while he fought that decision. The paid leave is a direct result of union pressure. Teachers unions have nearly iron-clad contracts for teachers that include the right to a hearing for any misconduct (that can take years) and having actual misconduct removed from their permanent record, even if it includes sexual misconduct. Teachers are rarely, if ever, fired on the first offense. And in the case of Deming it took over twenty years of innumerable offenses and a trail of allegations from victimized children. After the expose in the Seattle Times came out, Deming finally lost his teaching license in 2006. He never served a day in jail.
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Right now on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, teachers are amassed and whining about the loss of collective bargaining and benefits. Wisconsin teachers want us to believe they are saints who only care for the children of the taxpayers. The unions are insisting teachers need more money, more benefits, and Viagra to do their jobs properly. I’m not kidding.
The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association has filed a civil suit claiming that MPS’ exclusion of Viagra and other drugs that treat erectile dysfunction from its health insurance plans constitutes sexual discrimination against male employees.
This action would ensure Wisconsin school male employees, like Ryan Zellner, would have the chemical means necessary to continue their favorite pastime: screwing students. (Just this week the Milwaukee teachers’ union decided the screwing-ability of their male teachers isn’t as important as screwing taxpayers so they dropped the suit.)
[I think they dropped the suit after the news that the suit had cost close to a million $ to defend. ]
Zellner taught at three high schools in Wisconsin and by the time he was done he was convicted of 11 felony counts of sexual assault.
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Here’s where iron-clad union contracts get in the way of protecting children from predators. When Lewis called Green Bay High School for the information on the circumstances surrounding the non-renewal of Zellner’s contract and spoke to administrator John Wilson, Wilson tried to warn Lewis using code phrases intended to tip Lewis off without actually saying it. The union contracts are so restrictive on the administration that when a teacher is let go or moved from a school, the school they left is only able to confirm employment. They are not allowed to disclose why the teacher left. And so, administrators like Wilson are forced to hint around the issue and more often than not, fail to protect other children.
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Charged with lascivious molestation and one count of battery against a 7-year-old and an 8-year-old, John Morrison, a music teacher, still received the support of his union.
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Despite his admission of guilt, because of his union contract Morrison retained his pay while he awaited trial. The parents of the victims were forced to continue sending their tax dollars to pay the salary of their children’s molester.
3. The New Jersey Education Association
The NJEA was caught on tape vowing to stand beside self-described kiddie-fiddlers. It’s so damning, I can’t believe the union representatives didn’t get arrested. James O’Keefe, most famous for going undercover at ACORN offices as a pimp and receiving advice on how to evade taxes, called the union heads of several districts pretending to be a teacher with a “kiddie fiddling” problem who wanted to teach in New Jersey. He very clearly tells each union representative that he had improper sexual relationships with his students and asks them if he would get support from the union. In every case they said yes and in one case gave him advice on countering the accusations from the children!
Ann Post, Vice President of the Bloomfield Education Association, listened to a journalist posing as a teacher describe his problems of getting too close to his students. Her response was not to throw him out of her office, but to inform him that New Jersey is a great state for beleaguered teachers who get too close to students.
Post: New Jersey, it is as protected as possible as the law possibly allows you to be.
Journalist: So you would always take the perspective from the teachers side?
Post: Oh, absolutely.
O’Keefe explicitly told Post he had a problem with inappropriate relationships with the children in his care. Her only response was that she would take the side of the molester. Perhaps even worse than this exchange is one O’Keefe had with Annette Alston of the Newark Teachers Association who advised an admitted “kiddie-fiddler” to file a complaint against the victim claiming she was coming on to him! O’Keefe got each union representative he talked to taking the side of a teacher consumed with having sex with students instead of teaching them. Remember this video the next time the union tries to get sanctimonious about claiming to care for your children. Skip to the 3:00 mark to hear the worst of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmn3ma2358E
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Roland Pierre was removed from his class in 1997 because he was accused of molesting a 6th grade student.
[H]e allegedly called one of his students into an empty classroom where he taught English as a second language, closed the door and molested her.
First he wrapped the girl in a “bear hug,” according to a statement by then-schools investigator Ed Stancik. “He then kissed her on the mouth, inserted his tongue in her mouth, fondled her chest and reached under her skirt.”
The girl left and went to the administrative office, where she “burst into tears” and reported the incident.
Thirteen years later, he was still receiving his full pay and all his benefits while simply showing up every day to sit in one of New York’s infamous rubber rooms to play bridge. Instead of being able to fire Pierre due to the charges being mysteriously dropped and the union investigation dropped on a technicality, the laborious union process forced the chancellor of his school, Joel Klein, to make the decision to permanently reassign him away from children at a high cost to the taxpayers. But we can at least be grateful to Klein that he got this guy out of the classroom.
In New York up to 700 teachers were reporting to the rubber rooms until it was exposed by the New York Daily News. Instead of abolishing the process entirely, the union agreed to make the teachers do meaningless tasks like staple things and do “office work.” They refused to expedite the firing process and in NY, teachers still receive full pay while they sit in a room and shuffle papers. The cost to the taxpayers is outrageously high.
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The Entire School System in Seattle and the Public Teacher’s Union
Most of the examples in this list came from the Seattle school district, but the most egregious part is the way the district handled (or didn’t handle) the allegations and actual confessions of sexual abuse. The district and the unions worked together to obfuscate the truth, hide pedophiles and harm more unsuspecting families by foisting known abusers into their sphere.
When the Seattle Times asked the Bellevue School District for information about teachers and coaches accused of sexual misconduct, school officials and the state’s most powerful union teamed up behind the scenes to try to hide the files. Bellevue school officials even let teachers purge their own records at union-organized “file parties” to prevent disclosure.
Aren’t these the same dope-smoking Neanderthals who are peeing in the Wisconsin state capitol and complaining about the ethics of Enron and Wall Street? I wonder if they called Ken Lay for shredding tips. I guess I wouldn’t want to hand over the files either if I knew it would prove me to be a soulless union slave with no moral compass. When the Bellvue school balked at some of the aspects of the story in the paper, the Times shot back with an open letter to the school with which the school hung itself.
The term “file party” was created and used by the BEA [Bellvue Education Association union] in a Feb. 7 newsletter, “Alert!,” warning teachers of The Times’ records request and urging them to attend a union-organized “building file party” to review their files.
Bellevue teachers, like many others in the state, are allowed, with an administrator’s permission, to remove certain records — including those on misconduct — from their files after several years.
The district acknowledges that at least 64 teachers reviewed their files after The Times’ request. But officials dispute the use of the term “party” to describe what happened.
In a memo to school principals last March, Superintendent Riley said teachers had no right to group file-viewing and the reviews should be conducted individually and by appointment.
According to the district, most principals allowed teachers to review their files individually. In a few cases, two or three teachers reviewed their files at once. At some schools, the principal set aside part of a day and met with teachers in back-to-back individual sessions.
So, the union sent out a letter informing the teachers if they had anything to hide they’d better do it before the Times reporters got their hands on the evidence and the only thing wrong with this (according to them) is that the Times called it a “party.” But records regarding child molestation were purged on union advice and they’re upset at the whistle-blower’s verbiage. However, the Times was correct. They did call it a party. You can read the union newsletter yourself.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/08/7-child-predators-protected-by-american-teachers-unions/7/
Another Union Success Story
New Yorkers should really be thrilled to know this guy is on the Department of Education payroll.
A Queens teacher who collects a $100,000 salary for doing nothing spends time in a Department of Education "rubber room" working on his law practice and managing 12 real-estate properties worth an estimated $7.8 million, The Post found.
Alan Rosenfeld hasn't set foot in a classroom for nearly a decade since he was accused in 2001 of making lewd comments to junior-high girls and "staring at their butts," yet the department still pays him handsomely for sitting on his own butt seven hours a day.
In 2001, six eighth-graders at IS 347 in Queens accused Rosenfeld, a typing teacher who filled in for an absent dean, of making comments like "You have a sexy body," asking one whether she had a boyfriend and making others feel uncomfortable with creepy leers.
Because the Department of Education could not produce all the students as witnesses, he was found guilty in only one case. A girl testified that Rosenfeld stopped at her locker, where she was standing with a friend, and "said I love him because I talk to him so much."
A DOE hearing officer gave him a slap on the wrist -- a week off without pay -- for "conduct unbecoming a teacher." He was cleared to return to teaching.
Instead, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has kept the scruffy 64-year-old in a Brooklyn rubber room, deeming him too dangerous to be near kids, officials said.
The DOE can't fire him.
"We have to abide by the union contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.
So Rosenfeld simply collects his $100,049 salary -- top scale for teachers -- plus full health benefits and the promise of a fat pension, about $82,000 a year if he were to retire today.
His pension will grow by $1,700 each year he remains. He could have retired at age 62, but he stays.
He has also accumulated about 435 unused sick days -- and will get paid for half of them when he retires.
If that's not bad enough, this creep spends his time doing other business on city time, an obvious violation. Guess since he's union nobody can touch him.
A licensed attorney since 1973, Rosenfeld frequently talks on the phone to clients and other lawyers, insiders say.
"He's always working," one said.
City rules forbid staffers to conduct business on DOE time.
He refers to himself as "Dr. Rosenfeld" and often insults fellow teachers, calling them "losers" and "deadbeats."
He also doles out legal advice to his rubber roommates.
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