Here the rubber meets the lounge.
As The Post has learned, dozens of New York City teachers removed from public schools and placed in “rubber rooms” – infamous places where people under investigation or awaiting disciplinary trials are held – have been sent home to report remotely.
Suspended employees, while fully paid, do not have to do anything apart from log in and out via email and “stay in NYC.”
Most follow this rule, but a number of have defiantly flown to Germany and the West Indies, a highschool teacher awaiting a disciplinary hearing told The Post.
“No one knows where you might be. You might be in Alaska or Hawaii on vacation – they do not know,” said the teacher.
“You possibly can log in at 8am, roll over and fall asleep,” she added.
Employed educators can run errands, shop, or meet friends for lunch while on the town’s payroll.
“Not one of the teachers I do know put their jobs in danger by traveling long distances,” said Betsy Combier, a paralegal who writes “NYC Rubber Room reporter”
At the very least 200 suspended staff at the moment are stationed at home, Combier estimates.
With base teacher salaries ranging from $61,070 to $128,657 per yr, the taxpayer cost for these stay-at-home teachers could range from $12 million to $25 million.
“What an enormous waste of cash. They’re sitting in “rubber houses” doing nothing,” Combier said.
The exiled teachers included 92 DOE employees, including teachers and vice principals accused last yr of submitting fake COVID-19 vaccine cards. But a Brooklyn judge on Dec. 30 ordered the DOE to return staff who sued to their former jobs until they were heard. The DOE is in the means of sending them back. A criminal investigation is ongoing.
The movement of the DOE rubber room reflects one other change in notoriously kept pens.
The previous mayor of Bloomberg agreed in 2010 to shut down several huge “relocation centers” where at the very least 600 teachers accused of misbehavior or incompetence did nothing but read, nap, knit and cheer. A teacher in Queens ran a lucrative real estate business on the side. Some that should not resolved after sexual misconduct are permanently disfellowshipped
Since then, the DOE has scattered smaller gum rooms around the town.
The rubber tenants stayed home in the course of the COVID lockdown but returned to the buildings in September 2021.
Two days before the beginning of this school yr on September 6, the DOE sent an email saying they might be “temporarily reporting remotely.” No reason was given, but one teacher was told there was “no central office space available”.
“Since you should find a way to seem in person when instructed, you should be throughout the New York area on scheduled work days.” mission states. “Any tasks assigned to you might be delivered via your DOE email.”
Three teachers told The Post that the DOE didn’t tell them to use in person or give them any jobs – and forbade them from participating in distant workshops or training sessions.
“All I do is log in at 8am and log out at 2:50pm. No assignments, no nothing,” said one other highschool teacher who was awaiting a call in his administrative process after five years of working in a rubber room. He fights allegations that he made inappropriate comments to a student.
Last yr, the teacher went to an office constructing in Queens, where all he did was send out mail and sometimes photocopies, earning a salary of nearly $136,000.
“I’m blissful to be back home. I didn’t need to be in that constructing coping with the post office,” he said.
One other veteran teacher was accused of constructing an insensitive comment to a student who spent last yr in a DOE basement on Rockaway Boulevard with 15 other boarders.
“Absolutely no work,” he said. “We chatted. We played board games. We did all the pieces in our power to not kill one another.”
Now at home since September, “I’m watching TV,” he laughed. “I clean the home”.
She also says she takes antidepressants because “I feel like garbage.”