Originally Posted by zoobie555

One of two things should happen rather than the status quo. Either continue to pay them, but require them to attend 8 hours a day of classes suited to dealing with the specific problem that got them the disciplinary action to begin with - maybe some could be rehabilitated and return to work rather than being fired at the end of a months or years long vacaction...

or

Assasinate the union leaders, burn the contracts, fire the bums, and either hire 700 competent teachers or just divide their salaries up amongst those existing teachers that are competent human beings and don't need to be imprisoned in a rubber room indefinately.

I'd opt for a combination of both, except the ones with the least agregious offenses (most deserving of a second chance) are likely the ones that stay in detention the longest and waste the most taxpayer money as it would be more difficult to prove that they need to be terminated... while the ones that only spend a few weeks there are likely to be the few whose behavior is so attrocious even the union can't defend them very long.

So option two seems like the only reasonable way to solve the problem.

Fortunately/unfortunately, in a city as large as NYC, 700 teachers is probably no more than one tenth of one percent of the teacher population - relatively little wasted tax dollars but also not a big enough problem for most people to get upset and scream loud enough to get the system changed.

Why the other teachers in the union aren't as mad as hell over this I don't understand - this prevents them from being paid a more reasonable wage, and teachers (the good ones) are seriously underpaid