The "Rubber Room" Problem

[tonysam]

Some good suggestions from Chaz's School Daze blog:

First, any teacher who is not arrested for criminal or sexual issues could only be removed from his or her assignment after a three person mediation panel, paid for by both the DOE and UFT, interviews the major players, including the accused teacher to determine the seriousness of the charges. If the three person panel agrees that the charges are both real and serious. Then and only then can the DOE remove the teacher from the school. If the three person panel decides that the charges have been embellished, distorted, perverted, or false and does not raise to the level of serious. The Principal can only give the teacher a letter to his or her file. This would limit the "rubber rooms" to the serious cases.

Second, to ensure a fair investigation, a UFT assigned investigator will work with the DOE investigative agencies to determine the extend of the alleged teacher misconduct. The UFT assigned investigator will sit in on all witness interviews and will write their own report. If the UFT assigned investigator report is at odds with the DOE investigation report, both reports will be given to the three member panel as evidence for determining the level of seriousness of the charge and the removal of the teacher to the "rubber room".

Finally, the three member panel can also recommend action be taken for administrative misconduct when it is discovered that the charges against the teacher are bogus, discriminatory, or greatly exaggerated. Fines against the administrators can be issued when the three member panel determines such administrative misconduct.

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My comment: Firing teachers is serious business, for a teacher's career is totally destroyed and he or she CANNOT reclaim a teaching career in public education thanks to districts requiring disclosure of terminations, resignations in lieu of terminations, etc. Districts no longer take dismissals seriously (except, of course, for hiring purposes); they regard a termination hearing as nothing but a joke, and they treat legal proceedings as if they are above the law--hell, school districts now think they ARE the law.

Unfortunately, the trend is to turn public school teaching into "at-will" employment for ALL teachers, as long as there are too many people graduating from universities gullible enough to want to be teachers.