700 teachers paid to do nothing!!

It reminds me of this well-circulated story:

As director of communications I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired, and the word "pedagogical" circled in red.

The HR manager was fairly reasonable and once he looked the word up in his dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it.

Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper.

It gets worse... pretending these are folks "waiting to be proven guilty" isn't quite true...

http://www.reason.com/news/show/36802.html

Once, Klein reports, the school system discovered that a teacher was sending sexual e-mails to a 16-year-old student. "This was the most unbelievable case to me," he says, "because the e-mail was there, he admitted to it. It was so thoroughly offensive." Even with the teacher's confession, it took six years of expensive litigation before the school could fire him. He didn't teach during those six years, but he still got paid—more than $350,000 total.

An politicians want to blame Wall St for our government's budget crisis. It's disgusting.

Finally, a task worthy of their qualifications!
Prepare to be WOWed!

Alan, I LOOOOVE that story!!!!

Were the sexual emails unwanted? Because, nyc10022, I'm sure you agree there were really great teachers at Stuy who crossed those kinds of lines. And then some!

Should a nanny-state attitude terminate well-qualified high school teachers? I don't think so. I'd want a very careful "trial" exploring the whole picture, not some little incident.

"Were the sexual emails unwanted? Because, nyc10022, I'm sure you agree there were really great teachers at Stuy who crossed those kinds of lines. And then some!"

The age of consent in New York state is 17, and in a great many states in this country, it's 16. Frankly, if sexual advances aren't unwelcome, I've never seen the problem if the *young adult* in question is 16 or over. I don't see any reason to ruin a teaching career (and a life) over a third party's moral problem with it.

And moreover, sexual emails are not necessarily sexual advances. They can be racy jokes, political jokes (i.e. naked photoshops of politicians), etc. etc.

"Were the sexual emails unwanted? Because, nyc10022, I'm sure you agree there were really great teachers at Stuy who crossed those kinds of lines. And then some!"

Oh yes... some "legendary teachers".

> Frankly, if sexual advances aren't unwelcome, I've never seen the problem if the *young adult* in question is 16 or over.

Well, here its against the law.

And, if one group of folks should be following the law when it comes to children, it should be... uh... public school teachers.

And, I think if it this way... if you can't fire a teacher for sexual advances on children, imagine how hard it is to get rid of a teacher for just being a... lousy teacher.

Point is, its nearly impossible.

don't stand, don't stand so close to me....

Point is, there's virtually no evidence that any of these teachers are lousy teachers -- so this is a story of Boston Bloomberg squandering lots of money while good teachers are withheld from classrooms.

"ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores"

"I was charged with having a student sit in my class with a hat on, singing."

"accused of throwing a girl's test sign-up form in the garbage during an argument"

"...for pushing a boy while I was breaking up a fight."

Given that Boston Bloomberg believes himself to be an opera diva with enough vendettas to match, it's clear that the union protections are fully appropriate and prevent vindictive firings. Look, for example, at the budget-slashing he and Porcine Quinn did on the Public Advocate's office, which already had nearly no budget, and is charged with overseeing ... yes, you guessed it: the Mayor's office and the City Council.

Suspended teachers should be paid...they haven't been found guilty of anything...Police,fire, etc. they get suspended it's with pay.

Even if somehow you view it ok for a grown adult to be with a 17 year old, it should be prohibited for teachers with students within their own school.

Agreed. But there isn't even an allegation of a teacher "being with" a student ... just allegedly sexual (whatever that means) emails, possibly not unwanted. And clearly, in many cases, much less even than that.

> there's virtually no evidence that any of these teachers are lousy teachers

Yes, my point is ones who are just lousy teachers don't even go to the rubber rooms.

They're in the classrooms teaching!

Prove it.

So how do you get fired from a teaching job?
Being incompetent won't get you fired.
Having sex with students won't get you fired.
Not even failing to attend will get you fired.
The line seems to be at firearms. Show up with a gun and then maybe..............