WELCOME TO THE RUBBER ROOM

There's such a stink about teachers in the limbo of the Rubber Rooms getting paid for doing nothing. Articles have them sleeping, watching DVD's, learning to knit, etc. All true, but let's look at the whole picture. Not one teacher in any Rubber Room asked to be there. Not one. Too many written articles seem to suggest these teachers purposely put themselves in the Rubber Rooms in order to get paid for doing whatever they pleased. If this was true, any outrage would be understandable. But it's not true. I repeat, not one teacher in any Rubber Room asked to be there!

As for those activities: the card playing, the DVD watching, the knitting, the sleeping, etc. Let's say you're at the airport and your flight is cancelled. For some reason they can't tell you the time of the next departure. So, what do you do? You're stuck. Some people get angry and start screaming at the poor clerks, some people start talking to other passengers. There's nothing like a shared disaster to bring strangers together. So, you sit and you wait, and you try to make the best of your time. You read the paper, buy a paperback, do a crossword puzzle, turn on your laptop if you have it with you, or sleep, or talk--whatever--you're stuck. If the delay isn't long, you can laugh about it as you get on board. But if the delay stretches beyond a reasonable time-- then what do you do? There's nothing to laugh about now. You're stuck in a way you never imagined. The angry passengers are angrier. There's now more time to fill. So, you fill it any way you can and hope your flight leaves soon.

The Rubber Rooms are like that. These teachers are stuck. And it's more like a bus station than an airport. The rooms are small and overcrowded, and the clock keeps ticking, with nobody knowing when their hearing date will be coming up. They're stuck. What do you expect them to do? They would all welcome a quick hearing, but they have no control over anything that happens to them anymore. Their job is to wait. This is dictated by The Department of Education and the UFT, not the teachers themselves. And for that they get paid. They're stuck in a way they never imagined. And they're not stuck for days, many of them are stuck for years. So, they fill their time any way they can, and hope their hearings come soon.

I know of teachers who've asked if they could take classes. Being professionals they wanted to keep up with any changes, since the curriculum under Klein keeps shifting, as the Chancellor struggles to create a one-size-fits-all educational system. The Union representative said he would get back to them. Nobody got back to them. Nobody cares. The Union Reps go through the motions. They do what they have to do to make it seem as if they're doing something. After the first articles came out exposing the Rubber Rooms there were meetings and rallys. Randi Weingarten went personally to soothe those languishing in Rubber Rooms. She made them feel like something was going to be done. Nothing was done.

The teachers in the Rubber Rooms don't want to just sit around. The Klein Laws dictate that they do.

So, the next time your flight is delayed for hours, or days, imagine if the delay was a year, or two, or three, or more. Yeah, that wouldn't be much fun would it? Welcome, to the Rubber Room.

DAILY NEWS RUBBER ROOM REHASH

The Sunday Daily News recently published an extensive article on the Rubber Rooms. Most of it seemed pieced together from varied articles on the internet. Even the stats were old. It mentioned around 700 teachers in the Rubber Rooms: there are about a thousand now.

The article had a few sympathetic things to say about the torturous atmosphere of the Rubber Rooms, but then filled the rest of the article with the same old foggy defenses the DOE and Randi Weingarten of the UFT have used since this whole sorry mess was dragged out into the open. The DOE spouted its lie that they only exile teachers "if evidence suggests they're a danger to kids." If this were true no teacher in the Rubber Rooms would, or should, be allowed to return to the school system. As it is, many do return, but only after the DOE has done everything to demoralize and intimidate them. To have to lie exposes the fact that the DOE has no actual defense. The Klein Laws are artificial laws; why shouldn't their defense be artificial as well?

Randi Weingarten, again said the right thing. Referring to the Rubber Rooms, she said, "They're demoralizing, horrible places." But, as usual, there was no statement of action. Why are teachers being forced to spend years in these demoralizing, horrible places without the UFT fighting aggressively to get them the same rights that every citizen in the United States is supposed to have. Why do the DOE and the UFT find it so hard to work out a fair and just system.? Klein and Weingarten are both lawyers, so they know the artificial legality of this system they've pieced together. It's not fair, it's not just, and both parties should be ashamed of themselves for letting it continue.