For years, the New York State Department of Education dealt with public school teachers accused of misconduct by sending them to Rubber Rooms to await the hearings which would determine their guilt or innocence. The teachers had to report to these rooms, which were scattered across the boroughs in places like government buildings, just as they would report to their regular workplace - 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Many were stuck in a Rubber Room for months or even years awaiting trial, forced to decide whether to stick it out in hope that they would be someday allowed to teach again, or just quit the system and give up. Stress is high and morale is low as teachers try to hold onto their hopes and dignity. 

Where did this system come from? The teachers' union, The United Federation of Teachers, protects teachers with rules which make it very difficult to fire them, but the schools can't allow teachers who have been accused of bad behavior to remain in their classrooms for months or years until their hearing dates. The city's solution was the Rubber Rooms, which gets "bad" teachers out of the classroom while still satisfying the Union by giving them full pay. 

The Rubber Room system was extremely controversial. Many of the teachers in the Rubber Rooms asserted that they were falsely accused, punished for whistle-blowing against corrupt administrators or accused by principals or other teachers who held personal grudges against them. And the teachers who were guilty continued to draw full pay plus benefits and pension at taxpayers' expense, creating much public outrage. One particularly notorious case was that of Alan Rosenfeld, a teacher accused of sexual harassment who remained in the Rubber Room for nearly a decade drawing a salary of over $100,000 and using his time to run a real estate business and a law practice on the side. Additionally, Rubber Rooms cost the city $65 million per year in labor expenses.

By 2010, it had become abundantly clear that this absurd practice was unsustainable for the city and its taxpayers. In April, the city and the teachers' union reached an agreement that ended the practice. Now, suspended teachers are given menial jobs within the school system and spend their days making photocopies or stapling documents at full salary. While this may ease some minds, the question of what to do with accused teachers ultimately has not yet been solved and is simply another problem in the country's failing public education system. 

To learn more about Rubber Rooms, check out these links:

The New Yorker
An excellent in-depth article about Rubber Rooms
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill

The New York Times
Article announcing the close of the Rubber Rooms
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html

NYC Rubber Room Reporter
A close-up look at the New York City public school system from the viewpoint of a parent advocate
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/

This American Life
A radio program about Rubber Rooms
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/350/human-resources