Paid To Do Nothing

While in cash strapped California hundreds of teachers are receiving pink slips, hundreds of teachers in New York are being paid for doing nothing.

Seven hundred New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around for eight hours a day, and do whatever they want to pass the time.

Because union contracts make it hard to fire them the teachers have been banished to so-called “rubber rooms”, off-campus office spaces where they sit for months and sometimes years waiting for their disciplinary hearings. Because the teachers are still collecting their full salaries of about seventy thousand dollars this ends up costing taxpayers sixty five million dollars a year.

City officials say they make teachers report to the “rubber room” because union contracts require they be allowed to continue in their jobs in some fashion while their cases are being heard. But instead of work the teachers are spending their eight hours playing yoga, scrabble, surfing the internet or just staring at the wall.

Here’s an idea. Make them use the internet to create lesson plans. Like how to do good by being bad.

(Brian Banmiller is a national Business Correspondent for CBS News Radio, free lance writer and public speaker. The former television business news anchor in San Francisco can be reached at brian@banmilleronbusiness.com .)