Senator Ruben Diaz Jr. bounced angry remarks at the city and the Department of Education outside the Bronx “rubber room” on Thursday, February 11.
Diaz and Assemblyman Marcos Crespo called on colleagues in Albany to scrap labor laws that sanction the rubber room process, wherein teachers and administrators accused of misconduct and incompetence languish in limbo and wait to be exonerated or disciplined, while the DOE and union reps slug it out.
“It is unconscionable that millions of taxpayer dollars set aside for our children’s education continue to be wasted in rubber rooms,” the senator said. “We must put an end to this fiasco and close the rubber room in the south Bronx and [those] throughout New York City.”
Diaz and Crespo demanded that innocent teachers be swiftly reinstated and guilty teachers be let go.
Former teacher Francisco Garabitos, the 25-year DOE vet who engineered a bomb threat at his Bronx school in April 2009, emerged outside the Courtlandt Avenue “temporary reassignment center” and asked Diaz’ permission to speak.
Garabitos was arrested for the April threat, a rubber room protest. Rather than be sent to Courtlandt Avenue for a third time, Garabitos, who allegedly roughed up a student, caused panic at New Millennium Business Academy Middle School.
“We do not condone misbehavior from teachers,” he shouted on February 11. “But we want teachers to have due process like anyone else.”
Because of the economic recession and severe budget cuts, Bronx schools could use the millions paid to rubber room teachers who don’t work, Crespo said. For example, P.S. 107 on Seward Avenue nearly lost its after-school programs, he noted.
“We need to put money where it’s needed, in the classroom,” Crespo remarked.
I.S. 125 parent Helen Jacome questioned why the DOE has funds to pay rubber room teachers when the Metropolitan Transit Authority is hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole and plans to eliminate free and discounted student MetroCards.
“My children all take buses,” Jacome said. “And besides books, there are good programs not used by teachers [for money reasons]. It’s unfair.”
Castle Hill neighborhood leader Gerri Lamb, “a parent, a grandparent and a great grandparent of children who attend public schools,” argued that Bronx students would benefit if the DOE spent to retain paraprofessionals rather than to keep rubber room teachers comfortable.
Diaz lashed out at the rubber room process in the wake of several newspaper exposes. Math teacher Francisco Olivares, who allegedly molested two 12-year old students and impregnated a 16-year old girl, has been paid to sit in a rubber room for seven years.
There are 660 rubber room teachers on the city’s payroll, Diaz said.
Reach reporter Daniel Beekman at (718) 742-3383 or dbeekman@cnglocal.com
