Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Bad rubber room bounce

Michael Mulgrew’s UFT is not helping.


Hagen, Kevin Freelance NYDN/Freelance, NYDN


Michael Mulgrew’s UFT is not helping.



Amid the sting of national ridicule, the United Federation of Teachers struck a deal with Mayor Bloomberg in 2010 to abolish rubber rooms where instructors deemed unfit for classes languished at full pay.


UFT President Michael Mulgrew envisioned the dawn of a new era in which a beefed-up cadre of arbitrators would speedily render judgment on Department of Education charges. No more would hundreds while away years doing nothing.


It hasn’t worked out as trumpeted — and that should be no surprise at all.


Speaking of Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, our editorial at the time concluded: “They promise they will succeed. We take them at their word — even while recalling that much-heralded rubber-room reforms announced in 2008 accomplished exactly nothing.”


Due to the obstinacy of Mulgrew’s teachers union, which clings to every contract comma to sidestep timely terminations and defend the indefensible, the rubber rooms have merely morphed.


As the Daily News reported on Saturday, they are spread throughout the city, but are just as costly to the taxpayers.


The annual price tag in salaries and benefits is $ 29 million — a mere $ 1 million less than when the agreement was brokered — to keep 326 misconduct-accused educators on the payroll. Most of their cases have dragged for six to nine months, a far cry from a promised 60 to 90 days.


The 2010 deal called for increasing the number of arbitrators from around 20 to 39. For a time, the system had the full complement and began whittling backlogged cases. More recently, the number has fallen to 19, with the city charging in a lawsuit that the union has balked at okaying new hires. Both sides have veto power over appointments.


So, aided and abetted by a Byzantine arbitration process, teachers sit in an expensive purgatory . Still worse, the arbitrators, chosen jointly by the city and the UFT, have set endless precedents against firing almost anyone.


Which explains why, as The News reported, Shenequa Duke, a Bronx special education teacher, collects pay even though she used a broom to hit a student who arrived late. A hearing officer suspended her for 45 days.


It explains why Stefan Hudson, a former dean who grabbed, shook and slammed a student into the table, is still collecting pay. He got off with a $ 10,000 fine and orders to attend an anger management seminar.


It explains why Edgar Ortiz, a Bronx public school teacher who patronized a prostitute — and then failed to inform his superiors of the arrest as required — escaped with a $ 7,500 fine.


In the city public schools, those firing offenses are license to a paid vacation.


Expert at pointing fingers everywhere but in the mirror, Mulgrew blames the city. The union wrongly says the administration — which is attempting to fire these misfits — has substantial control over the arbitration process. And it faults the city for failing to take arbitrators’ rulings to court, when that is beside the point.


What brass. It’s the union, with the help of allies in Albany, that stacked the arbitration process against the city from the get go and now, clearly, is delaying in hope of more favorable treatment from a new mayor.





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