Today’s Teacher Lesson: Just Sit There…for Months

It’s the calm before the storm…and in the cozy GoNOMAD Cafe, I found a place to write here in front of the windows. I logged on to LATimes and read about the downside of teachers unions.

There are 160 teachers in LA who are paid to come to school every day and do nothing. No teaching, no grading…they just sit there and do nothing. They are all accused of various infractions; from drug offenses to sexual contact with students, and they are all waiting for their cases to be reviewed. Still, they sit and get their $68,000 salaries.

There was a time when LA teachers not teaching would be assigned non-teaching jobs. But the contract with the union now prohibits them from being assigned anything else but just sit there. Teachers have complained that nobody tells them what their rights are and how long they will be assigned to just sit.

School board members decry the system, ‘that is tilted toward teachers,’ and proves how damn hard it is to remove anyone from the classroom.

In NYC, it’s worse–about 550 of the district’s 80,000 teachers spend school hours in ‘rubber rooms,’ where they do crossword puzzles, and wait til the end of the day.’ They’re waiting for a judgement that most likely will throw them out of teaching…but not before they collect months and years worth of salary.