Rubber Room Suit Out - Kaufman Comments

Elizabeth Green writes about the tossing of the rubber room suit by a state judge in today's NY Sun. Jeff Kaufman provides more extensive background on the case by Teachers4Action and comments on the ICE blog. Head over and read Jeff's entire piece. Here are a few excerpts:

Back in January a group of rubber room teachers who called themselves “Teachers4Action” filed an action in Federal District Court against the City and the UFT (the UFT was not originally named but was later included as a necessary party which resulted in the loss of union representation for the charged teachers) in an effort to shut the rubber rooms down. Erin Einhorn of the Daily News reported that “The suit alleges that the rooms are part of a "scheme" to discriminate against experienced teachers and "reduce salaries by forcing teachers to quit or be fired.

Teachers4Action is to be congratulated for having the courage to bring these proceedings. They have clearly been instrumental in maintaining the pressure on the both the UFT and the DOE to help stop the abuse that rubber room teachers are subjected to every day.

While kudos go out to Elizabeth Green of the New York Sun for covering this story it is important to note that Justice Payne did not throw out the case because “there was no evidence that the arbitrators were biased against the teachers.”

While the judge made a side comment about the lack of evidence he never heard any evidence since the case was dismissed because Teachers4Action filed the wrong paper.

We hope they will continue to fight.