In the rubber room

Today's topic was mentioned to me by a coworker. In passing, he mentioned that he'd heard a report on This American Life about what he called The Rubber Room.

He had the name right, and I found out that The Rubber Room isn't a single Rubber Room, it's a bunch of Rubber Rooms - holding rooms where teachers from the New York Public School system are sent while disciplinary procedures are pending against them. If a student makes an accusation against a teacher, the teacher reports to a Rubber Room the next day - earning full salary, getting full pay and benefits but having no contact with students at all.

On the surface, it doesn't sound like an entirely unreasonable situation. It's a suspension with pay pending a disciplinary hearing. The problem is that the disciplinary hearing often doesn't come for months...or years.

So the teacher sits in a Rubber Room, passing the time, locked in a type of purgatory in which they can't do what they're trained to do and what - in most cases - they want to do. Instead, they're stuck waiting and waiting and surviving.

The story describes the Rubber Rooms as being somewhat like prisons, with a very established and clearly defined hierarchy of who's been there the longest, who gets what seat, which groups can sit together, and even their own manners of discipline as fights sometimes break out between the held teachers.

I understand that some teachers do cross lines - swearing, putting their hands inappropriately on students, transgressing in some way - and those teachers shouldn't be in contact with students. But as the clips from the coming Rubber Room documentary show, there are also false accusations out there.