By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK CITY – Rotten and wormy teachers in the Big Apple are still a huge problem for education officials who disbanded the large “rubber rooms” used to warehouse educators they can’t fire because of union protections.

Those teachers, who are deemed too dangerous or incompetent to lead a classroom, still exist throughout the city in education support roles or new buildings where many continue to sit idle, collecting their paychecks and waiting out the extraordinarily long arbitration process.

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And the problem still costs the district $22 million per year in salaries and benefits for teachers who don’t teach, the New York Daily News points out in a recent editorial.

“I know it’s galling, and it is real money,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the United Federation of Teachers union is using every available tactic to stall the development of a meaningful teacher evaluation process that could significantly reduce the problem and its burden on taxpayers.

The Daily News detailed the problem:

“The system is so cumbersome that administrators file charges against only a minuscule percentage of instructors and school leaders.

“Around 200 educators a year are charged with incompetence or misconduct in any given academic year – a measly one-quarter of 1% of 80,000 teachers and principals.”

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Without the UFT’s cooperation in developing new evaluation standards and streamlining the arbitration process, there’s only so much city officials can do. The Daily News cites the fact that the city’s education department processed 419 misconduct or incompetence cases in 2010-11, and only 44 percent of those charged either quit or were fired as a result.

Many of the remaining teachers were left on the payroll, but without the trust of the school district to lead a classroom.

“The lesson for (New York City school) Chancellor Dennis Walcott,” the Daily News suggests, is to “file more charges.”

We think that would certainly be a good start. A streamlined arbitration system, as well as the ability to remove useless teachers from the payroll, would also help a great deal.