- Posted by David on June 29, 2009
By ANGELA MONTEFINISE
June 28, 2009
New York City high school teacher George Addison has pocketed almost $500,000 in taxpayer-funded paychecks over the last six years -- and hasn't taught a single class.
Accused of fondling a 15-year-old special-ed pupil, the veteran computer teacher has been twiddling his thumbs in a "rubber room" since 2003, years after his criminal case was dismissed.
Addison, who has also been investigated twice for corporal punishment during his 12-year career, collects a $79,531-per-year salary for sitting in one of the city's seven "teacher reassignment centers" -- or "rubber rooms" -- while he waits for his case to wind through the backlogged disciplinary system.
Other school employees have languished even longer in the Department of Education's purgatory, which costs taxpayers $65 million annually just for staffers' salaries.
A list obtained by The Post of all 637 exiled DOE employees as of April revealed one teacher has been in the bureaucratic lockup since 2002, and eight staffers since 2003.
In total, 207 staffers have lazed away for at least two years. The average stay lasts 57 weeks.
Rubber-room denizens include 43 employees charged with sex-related offenses, including 14 for relationships with students, the data shows. Another 140 were accused of employee misconduct, 117 of corporal punishment and 45 for incompetence.
More than 100 were banished after being arrested.
The DOE can suspend a teacher's pay in rare circumstances, but most continue to collect checks.
Teachers are banished to the teacher reassignment centers when they are accused of anything from insubordination to sexual misconduct.
During a typical day, rubber roomies show up at their assigned center by 8:15 a.m. They come and go outside as they please, and go home at around 3 p.m. In between, some knit, many read, and a few just vegetate.
Both the DOE and the teachers union admit the system is flawed. Guilty employees with tenure are kept on the payroll; innocent staffers are trapped in the backlog. It can take years to decide whether they can return to a classroom or be fired.
The tenure system makes it tough to fire legitimately bad teachers, but lengthy due process is needed to protect teachers against bogus claims often made for a variety of reasons, including retaliation by administrators or students.
The DOE and the union agreed last year to increase the number of state arbitrators who hear cases from 20 to 28, but budget cuts killed that plan.
There are currently only 23 arbitrators, who make $1,800 a day to work five times a month during the school year, twice in the summer. The number of teachers in the rubber rooms has dropped from about 750 in 2007.
"This is the psychological destruction of a person," said Steve Ostrin, a former teacher of the year at Brooklyn Tech, who was sent to the rubber room in 2005 for alleged inappropriate behavior. "They take your life away from you."
He was acquitted, and in 2007, a DOE document stated he should be cleared. But two years later, he's still collecting his $95,202-a-year salary in the rubber room.
"People think it's OK because we get paid," he said. "It's not. We get paid, but at what cost?"
DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte said the agency has "taken several steps to streamline" procedures for rubber-room employees, including dedicating staff to monitor their status.
angela.montefinise@nypost.com
- Posted by David on June 16, 2009
The Leader-Telegram of Eau Claire reports that John Ashley, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, is warning that removing the state law that limits increases in teachers' pay and benefits would be financially disastrous for school districts, especially during a recession. Ashley said ending the so-called Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) —as well as changing other policies used to determine teachers' compensation packages—will hurt school districts' ability to control their costs, the vast majority of which are tied to salaries and benefits. He said the state legislature is setting up school boards to look like "bad folks" because the policy changes will force layoffs.
The QEO was put in place by the state Legislature in 1993 as a way to control school costs. The law allows districts to avoid binding arbitration with teachers unions if they offer pay and benefit increases worth 3.8%. Teachers unions and their political allies—including Gov. Jim Doyle and the Democrats who control the legislature—say the QEO treats teachers unfairly by limiting their ability to negotiate. The current version of the 2009-11 state budget eliminates the QEO effective in 2010 and makes two changes to how contracts are negotiated: Arbitrators would no longer have to give the "greatest weight" to the financial impact state-imposed revenue limits have on school districts and won't have to give "greater weight" to local economic conditions. Compounding the problem, said Eau Claire Superintendent Ron Heilmann, is that the state budget would only allow school districts' tax levies to grow by $200 per pupil in each of the next two years, while it would decrease state aid for school districts by 3.5%.
Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, said school board officials' concerns are misplaced. "Their line of argument assumes that in a time of economic downturn collective bargaining means bigger salary increases," Bell said. "There is nothing in the law that says that's true." Bell noted that local economic conditions will still be a factor when arbitrators chose between competing contract offers. Furthermore, she added, most teachers contracts don't go to arbitration anyway, and when they do, arbitrators generally are conservative and neutral.
Source: Eau Claire Leader-Telegram
- Posted by David on June 1, 2009
Julia Steiny: Zero-tolerance policies in schools need to end
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 31, 2009
“Zero Tolerance is a social disease,” announces Dr. Aviva Rich-Shea.
Such a refreshing idea. From schools to prisons, America’s zeal for retribution and punishment of misbehavior only makes bad situations worse.
Rich-Shea teaches crime and justice studies at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, and is a fellow at Suffolk University’s Center for Restorative Justice. The center collects, studies and teaches ways of disciplining misbehavior that hold offenders accountable while helping them, the victims and their community heal and repair the harm.
“With zero tolerance, what had been kids’ defiant behavior became assault. In schools, bullying, fighting and sexual harassment are now criminalized. Research shows that these harsh, punitive policies have a negative effect on school climate and reduce academic achievement. But the problem of zero tolerance is much bigger than the schools. We’re in an era of restricting civil rights generally. So severe, punitive social controls are filtering down to youth.”
Over the last two decades, desperate, angry efforts to curb misbehavior have banished troubled youth into burgeoning prisons. But banishment never gets to the root of the misbehavior.
The story of zero tolerance began in the late 1980s, when crack cocaine and a surge of easily-available guns plagued America’s streets, especially its cities. The virtuous-sounding slogan appealed to frightened communities. Campaigning politicians promised “zero tolerance” to brandish their high morals and hearty appetites for “getting tough” with bad guys.
In 1994 the feds passed the “Gun-free Schools Act,” mandating that any school receiving federal money — such as Title 1 poverty aid — must expel a child who brought a gun to school, for one year.
The law did not mandate that school staff find out if the kid really intended to be aggressive, or was scared, confused or showing off.
In 1996, the feds amended the law to encourage schools to expand the scope of zero tolerance to include any and all weapons or drugs. With self-righteous zeal, schools began punishing kids for having a kitchen knife to spread peanut butter. Carrying Midol, pain relief for menstrual cramps, became “drug possession.” A Boy Scout who forgot that his knife was in his pocket was toast.
Rich-Shea invokes the case, currently before the Supreme Court, of the Arizona 13-year-old who was strip-searched at school. Vindictive students told administrators that she had prescription-strength Ibuprofen — drug possession — which wasn’t even true. The school argues it was merely following procedure to ensure a drug-free environment.
Shortly after Rich-Shea’s talk, the court did hear that case. Several justices sympathized with the school’s administrators because they need to combat drug abuse with whatever force they see fit.
Wow. Really?
An exasperated Rich-Shea tells us that by 1998, school suspensions had reached 3.2 million per year, where they’ve since plateaued. Minorities are two to three times as likely to be suspended than white kids. Males four times as likely as females. Just for the record, a kid who’s been suspended is statistically at high risk of dropping out of school. “Disciplinary exclusions deny students education,” she says. “What are we doing? A thousand students drop out every hour of every school day.” Suspensions certainly pushed out many of them.
Rich-Shea says, “Suspensions do not change anyone’s behavior. Mainly it punishes the parents. Early suspensions predict an even higher rise in further misbehavior. The school is certainly not promoting trust among its students if they can be banished.”
Rich-Shea questions the practice of hiring police, euphemistically called School Resource Offices (SRO), to patrol schools. “Having police in schools has changed the dynamic. Supposedly, they’re there to get to know the kids. But SROs say that when they see illegal behavior, they’re sworn to make an arrest.”
In her research, Rich-Shea found no evidence that zero tolerance has made the schools any safer, nor has it improved the kids’ feeling of being safe in schools.
Quite the opposite, kids who’ve been harshly treated tend to escalate their acting out.
Then for lack of any better idea, when punishment fails, schools and communities punish yet more harshly. Kids who skip detention get suspension. After so-many minor infractions, suspension is automatic. This is like taking a double-dose of the same medicine when it didn’t work in the first place.
Rich-Shea says, “No one intended this. No one set out to create a school-to-prison pipeline. But we have gotten used to it.”
Educators are wringing their hands over the recently-released NAEP scores among 17-year-olds, because they have not improved since 1970. But if you take a good hard look at communities’ fearful and controlling attitudes towards kids — at least other people’s kids — it’s a wonder youths cooperate as much as they do. Yes, parenting has fallen on very hard times. Realistically, schools must pick up some of the slack by teaching and modeling responsible, community-appropriate behavior.
Understanding why kids act out is the first order of business. Teaching them alternatives is next.
Suffolk’s Center for Restorative Justice studies and collects restorative techniques for handling misbehavior, including ancient tribal-circle techniques. Theirs is critically important work in progress. Because what schools do now wrecks lots of kids.
Zero tolerance is totally backfiring.
Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project.