The New York Post and Daily Caller report on a disgraced typing teacher in New York who hasn’t taught a class since 2001 but collects over $100,000 a year from taxpayers thanks to union rules that prevent his firing. “His case is one of seven in the New York City Department of Education, where teachers the department can’t fire are “rubber-roomed” — essentially meaning they don’t do any real work but keep getting paid, the Caller reports. Six other teachers also find themselves collecting hefty checks and accumulating pensions for not working.
Read it and weep:
In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire.
Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.
Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says.
“It’s an F-U,” a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit. “He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.”
Accused in 2001 of making lewd comments and ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens, Rosenfeld was slapped with a week off without pay after the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing.
But instead of returning Rosenfeld to the classroom, the DOE kept him in one of its notorious “rubber rooms,” where teachers in misconduct cases sat idle or napped. As The Post reported, Rosenfeld kept busy managing his many investment properties and working on his law practice. He’s a licensed attorney and real-estate broker.
Asked what work he does, Rosenfeld laughingly told his friend, “Oh, I Xeroxed something the other day.”
Rosenfeld could have retired four years ago at 62, but his pension grows by $1,700 for each year he stays — even without teaching. If he quit today, his annual pension would total an estimated $85,400. Rosenfeld will also get paid for 100 unused sick days when he leaves.
New York has no mandatory retirement age for teachers.
That let rubber-room granddaddy Roland Pierre make a mockery of the system. He finally retired at age 76 last year — Criminal charges in 1997 that he molested a sixth-grade girl were dropped. He got $97,101 a year.
Thanks to the Committee's election-year program, union-label candidates like Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.) are being given a choice: pledge to change course and support Right to Work going forward, or face the potential political consequences.
This winter top bosses of the Miami-based United Teachers of Dade (UTD) are indeed in danger of being thrown to the curb.
Biden judicial nominee Nicole Berner has a track record of mindlessly repeating union bosses’ anti-Right to Work diatribes and defending their schemes to profit at the expense of the disabled.