deimos3428 wrote:If anyone else in society is suspected of a crime, the proper response is to report to the police.  

There isn't a special court for teachers.

If there was enough evidence to charge any of those teachers with a crime then they would have been charged.

Obviously, there isn't.

We're talking teachers who have been accused of policy violations.

Anyone can make such an accusation.  It's free.

Badmike wrote:one guy who was texting one of his female students several times a day, even when asked to stop by the girl, her parents, and the school administrators.  Now, the problem is a lot of the policy violations might not be illegal...

Emphasis mine.  That is illegal, at least as you've described it.  It's a little thing called harassment.  Probably also sexual harassment if I were to hazard a guess at the message content.  

FormCritic wrote:We're talking teachers who have been accused of policy violations.

Actually, we're talking about both.  The accusations apparently run the gamut from excessive lateness to violence and everything in between.  

For criminal accusations, an employer has a responsibility to report the matter to law enforcement.  It's a matter for the courts to decide, and beyond ensuring a safe working environment what happens to the employee is really not any of their business at that point pending the outcome of the investigation.  

For non-criminal behavior, it's a matter of internal policy.  It's either being followed or it isn't, but it's not an employer's role to "discipline" employees.  For the most part, all they can do legally is suspend an employee with or without pay, terminate the employee with cause, or not.  (And the suspend-without-pay bit generally doesn't come into play, because if you had a good enough reason for that one you could terminate with cause.)

Besides, why would a teacher that "refuses to teach" (let alone someone accused of a crime) not also refuse to hang out in some empty room?  If by some insane stroke that's actually something written into their employment contract, and they'll be fired if they refuse to comply, then they really need to get out there en masse and strike until it's not.  Employment isn't slavery.

deimos3428 wrote:The accusations apparently run the gamut from excessive lateness to violence and everything in between.  

What does "violence" mean?  It conjures images of gross crimes.  If there were evidence of gross crimes would the teacher be sitting in the Rubber Room?  Clearly, logic demands some other definition of "violence."

Whenever you read a media story about schools and education you should take it with one huge honkin' grain of salt.  

The devil is always, always, always in the details...and the crucial details in articles about schools, teachers and education are often completely left out or completely mis-represented by the journalist.

You know, there is one weird thing - you notice how quiet it is.  It is not that I ever really noticed the planes overhead.  You don't really.  But with no flights at all, it just seems much quieter.  I quite like it.     Of course, it is screwing up everyone's work over here.  But still, a few more days of clear quite skies would not be so bad.  

After 9/11/2001, air traffic was shut down in the US for a while, as the powers that were took stock of possible danger.  So I know what you mean, Orlando being a fairly major destination.  Air traffic is not something you notice if you are a fair distance away, but it was fairly odd to have no planes in the sky.  I really feel for the folks stuck in limbo, waiting for the all-clear.

Badmike wrote:
I really feel for anyone that was supposed to go on vacation this weekend, either to or from Europe. That really sucks.

Mike B.

Just for some perspective, my wife and I closed on our first house on September 6th, 2001, in Dover Delaware (home of Dover Air Force Base). Coincidentally, we also had planned to take an extended auto tour of Great Britain the next week, and had purchased airline tickets. After 9/11 (about 3 or 4 days before our departure date) we naturally decided not to fly to Europe (got a full refund from the airline and all that jazz).

Being about a mile away from an AFB, as we unpacked all of our belongings into our new home, we were treated to a month-long exhibition of American air superiority. I have never seen so many Blackhawks, fighters, etc. flying in formation and day-and-night departures of C5s (when they were still in use) in my life, and hope never to do so again. It was quite literally awesome.

I don't feel for anybody. Get on a boat if you absolutely have to go to Europe or come home... you know?   Or take a train!

deimos3428 wrote:You have very flawed logic indeed, but there are no forms of violence that are legal in a classroom.  The problem is not the definition of violence, it is that regardless of the accusation, people are innocent until proven guilty.

(I may have missed some information, so...) I do not see where these teachers have been presumed guilty. They await a hearing on charges/allegations/etc... To assume they have been presumed guilty seems to suggest that the rubber room is the punishment. To me, this is not punishment at all. They are not forced to go to the rubber rooms by police. They can do whatever they want. The catch is that the "rubber room" has been identified as their place of duty until their hearing. If they want to keep getting paid, then they go where the boss tells them to go just like everybody else in the world. While obviously boring, I would hardly call getting paid full salary and benefits to sit in a crowded, dull room during school hours a punishment. These folks get paid to do nothing. That is the point of the rubber room.

Now on the general issue of rubber rooms...I don't like them because i don't like the idea that we are paying 30Mil a year to keep a few hundred people out of their normal jobs in order to "Do nothing." this is a waste of money. Use this money to fund more days for formal hearings and clear those who are innocent and clear the riff-raff out.

If, however, the cost of fighting the union would be well over the cost to operate the rubber rooms, then...well...it looks like we need to be more careful when hiring our teachers.

But this is in no way a presumption of guilt. It is a precautionary move that, if you think about it, most parents would support in cases where there is a question about one of their children's teachers. "Rubber room teachers" are not forced to comply. When they do comply they get paid full salary to play Sudoku, work on a novel, and potentially even telecommute or work for another employer via a laptop.

nevcoup wrote:The catch is that the "rubber room" has been identified as their place of duty until their hearing. If they want to keep getting paid, then they go where the boss tells them to go just like everybody else in the world.

You're missing the point.  If they just wanted to suspend the employee with pay as a precautionary move, that's their perogative and nobody would have a problem with that.

However, they're not simply doing that.  They are purposefully relocating the employees unfavorable conditions under the threat of losing their livelihood if they do not comply.  It is punishment.