In This Economy?

The best way to start the day is with a nice story about massive money dumping.

And THIS is that story.

It turns out that in NYC, when a teacher gets suspended, that teacher does not go home to think about what they’ve done. Oh no. Instead they go to off-campus office spaces to wait for their disciplinary hearings.

I know. At this point this doesn’t sound too bad.

But it gets worse.

The majority of these teachers will wait in these office spaces for roughly 2 years because the committee that handles disciplinary hearings only works five days a month. And these teachers will still collect full salaries and benefits. They still get their summers off and their holidays and weekends remain untouched. The only thing that really changes is that instead of rolling into school every morning to shape young minds, they’re going off to some random office to:

• play scrabble
• paint
• work on novels
• sneak out and get drinks at a nearby bar
• get into fights with one another
• do yoga
• sleep

And the fine, upstanding taxpayers of NYC are paying them to do all this.

So why can’t we just fire some of them initially? Well two reasons:

1. Teachers in NYC are protected by more unions and contract clauses than professional athletes. They’re essentially untouchable. So, instead of laying them off it makes more sense to simply throw them in a closet where no one will ever see or hear from them

2. Well, this one is a little more tricky. Let me explain…

But, believe it or not, it gets even worse.

A lot of these teachers can’t be fired because the things they are being held for are so unbelievably petty that firing would never be considered. One woman said she was being held for using abusive language — after being stabbed with some scissors. Wow. And the best part is that she has been in captivity for three years with no sign of getting out anytime soon. If a student stabbed me I’d be doing a lot more than cursing, but that’s why I’m not a teacher.

Another man said he was thrown into a rubber room after he tried to blow the whistle on an assistant principal who was tampering with test scores. He was basically muzzled for daring to speak out. How Iranian.

The whole thing is just a total mess.

And the best part:

Right now NYC and its taxpayers are spending about $65 million a year on this worthless shit. And they’re not the only city with a program like this. Holding areas, or “rubber rooms” as their occupants call them, are a normal practice in big cities all across the U.S. However, no one has nearly the problem that NYC has.

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Like I said above, there is nothing better than a good money dump story to make you feel better about your personal fiscal responsibility. I feel great right now!

I’d really encourage you to read the full article HERE.

Oh, and if you’re working on a novel you may want to go to NYC, get a job as a teacher, call a student a “bitch” on your first day, and then collect $70,000 a year for a few years while you write your masterpiece.

Tags: idiots, new york city, school, taxes, waste of money

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 12:50 PM and is filed under Bad News, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.