#Suspended teachers serve time in DOE ‘rubber rooms’ — at home

Since the COVID-19 shutdown, scores of city educators removed from classrooms pending administrative trials have spent four months on the city payroll in the comfort of their own homes — often with no work assigned.

“It seems like a good deal,” said Betsy Combier, a paralegal who defends teachers in discipline cases and writes the blog NYC Rubber Room Reporter.

“You’re getting full salary, you’re home with your family, and the DOE is not giving you anything to do. But it’s very emotionally distressing.”

Combier estimates that some 300 teachers and other staffers are currently idle while under investigation or pending trials that could result in their termination. “Paying that many people to do nothing makes no sense,” she said.

Tenured teachers, who typically make $80,000 to $100,000 a year, are entitled by law to hearings by an arbitrator before they can be fired for misconduct or incompetence — but some wait months or even years before their cases are heard.

Amid a barrage of embarrassing publicity, the city agreed to close its notorious rubber rooms in April 2010, when at least 600 teachers sat in massive “reassignment centers” getting paid to do nothing but nap, read, and chit-chat.

Since then, smaller rubber rooms have persisted, but most suspended staffers have been hidden — tucked away in schools and offices citywide.

Since the school shutdown in mid-March, the pedagogical purgatory has been prolonged because  hearings came to a halt.

The Department of Education refused repeated requests by The Post for the number of “reassigned” staffers and pending trials.

The DOE is working on a “brand new system to hold trials remotely,” said spokeswoman Danielle Filson. “Meanwhile, employees with pending charges who have work that can be done remotely are doing so.”

But exiled educators say the menial tasks they are asked to perform are few, if any.

“No work,” said Walter Rendon, a teacher at PS 24 in Riverdale who made $100,727 last year.

He was removed from his class last November after openly accusing Principal Steven Schwartz of  “bribing” teachers to praise him him in public and previously for gambling on horse races during school hours. The DOE reprimanded Schwartz.

Since the Covid shutdown, Rendon has spent the past four months at home. As a former tech teacher, he wanted to help PS 24 with the switch to remote instruction, but was ignored.

“They even sent a survey: ‘Would you be willing to do something online? I said,. ‘Of course.’ I was not asked to do anything.”

While rubber rooming at home is preferable to sitting in a closet-like office in the school, as was the case before the coronavirus outbreak, “It’s not a vacation,” Rendon said. “It’s so demeaning and insulting.”

Guidance counselor Ebony Valentine was removed from Parkside Preparatory Academy last November after accusing her principal of test fraud.

Asked what work she was assigned, she said, “Nothing.”

“I checked in every morning and clocked out every afternoon.”

Valentine, who made $105,505 last year, spent the days caring  for her 75-year-old mother, who has cancer, and a 95-year-old grandmother, she said.

Valentine told investigators that principal Adrienne Spencer was giving teachers embargoed state exams so they could coach kids before they took the tests.

Spencer has since retired, but Valentine faces charges she undermined the principal and overstepped her authority, records show. She is fighting back, claiming it was retaliation.

“Not one allegation is about my work or the kids. They took away a good counselor who really helped the kids.”