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For seven years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has paid Matthew Kim a teaching salary of up to $68,000 per year, plus benefits.(H/T: NewsAlert.) Obviously, the L.A. schools need to fire Kim and hire me, because I'm excellent at doing nothing. Ask my wife. And if they want me to harass someone, I'm also very good at that, too. I've had years of experience, threatening to strangle various journalistic colleagues or beat the daylights out of my kids.
His job is to do nothing. . . .
A special education teacher, he was removed from Grant High School in Van Nuys and assigned to a district office in 2002 after the school board voted to fire him for allegedly harassing teenage students and colleagues. In the meantime, the district has spent more than $2 million on him in salary and legal costs.
I'm going to apply for one of these no-work jobs in Los Angeles and if they don't hire me, I'll sue them for discrimination. Hillbillies have rights, too, y'know.
This is far more common than you might think. In NYC there are hundreds of teachers assigned to so-called "rubber rooms" where they are paid to sit around and do nothing. They watch tv, play cards, or practice their golf putts.
ReplyDeleteHere's an article about it from the NY Post.
Chris is right but here's the real scandal: the reason reassigning teachers to non-duties is commonplace is that it is near-impossible to fire a teacher and trying to do so usually costs more than just letting them loaf or giving them assignments where they can do the least harm. In New York, the costs of removing a teacher permanently can range up to $1 million and higher.
ReplyDeleteThe results go beyond the relatively small number assigned to hang around district offices. Many more teachers who ought to be fired are still assigned to teaching -- with the expected outcomes in kids shortchanged while taxpayers are stuck with paying these losers a package of salary and benefits that runs as high as $200,000 a year.
Indeed John, the entire teacher tenure system is completely broken.
ReplyDeleteI recall from my own high school days a teacher who showed up each morning half in the bag. He proceeded to drink his way through the day. His coffee cup was always full, but the contents bore absolutely no resemblance to actual coffee (wink wink). His classes were "fun" but nobody learned anything.
The school district didn't even try to fire him. It wasn't worth the hassle.