Rubber Rooms & Predators in the Classroom

File this one under corruption in the school systems and the media.  Cross list under "sexual abuse by teachers." 

Now consider this arresting passage from The New Yorker:

In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: "Children are fragile. Handle with care." It's a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.

This is what New York City has been doing with about 675 teachers removed from the classroom for various reasons. It's expensive. From the AP:

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimated last year that the practice was costing the taxpayers $65 million a year.

Well, there is a place to tighten the fiscal belt, and apparently NYC has finally decided to end the practice. Why did they do it in the first place? Because union rules make it virtually impossible to fire teachers. Predictably:

The union did not appear to sacrifice much in the deal. While the agreement speeds hearings, it does little to change the arduous process of firing teachers, particularly ineffective ones. Administrators still must spend months or even years documenting poor performance before the department can begin hearings, which will still last up to two months.

There is a much worse scandal hiding behind this one. The MSM has been in a feeding frenzy lately over sexual abuse by Catholic Priests and the Church's protection of the perpetrators. That is a genuine scandal to be sure, and the media was surely right to cover it.

You might suppose, however, that it would be as big a scandal and a story if worse rates of abuse were going on in the public schools and school officials were frequently failing to act or even investigate allegations. Well, a scandal it is in fact; but a story? Not so much.

The LATimes gives us some idea of what is going on.

In March [2008], we learned that administrators in South Los Angeles had failed to investigate allegations that a high school teacher had a sexual relationship with a student. Then they made Steve Thomas Rooney an assistant principal at Markham Middle School in Watts. He's in jail now, charged with having unlawful sex with a former student and molesting two girls from the Markham campus.

In another case this month, the principal and an assistant principal at South East High were slapped with criminal charges for failing to report a student's allegations that a substitute teacher had sex with her.

Four administrators and a dean have been disciplined in the two cases for ignoring district policies on reporting and investigating abuse allegations.

Now ask yourself: were you aware of a system-wide sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? Of course. Were you remotely aware of a similar scandal in the public school system? Of course not, unless you caught this piece by Hillary Profita in the National Review Online (picked up by CBSNews).

In accordance with a requirement of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.

As the National Catholic Register's reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state's entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.

Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.

That 2000 to 4 story ratio gives you a pretty good picture of the Media's selective attention. That extends to individual cases as well. When a former Priest came forward last year to report being abused thirty years ago, the LATimes reported it. When a teacher was sentenced two days later to eight counts of felony abuse with underage girls, the LAT ignored it.

Journalists just enjoy going after the Catholic Church a lot more than they like going after schools and school officials. I don't know what the real dimensions of the sexual abuse scandal in public schools is, but it is obvious that it's as big or bigger than anything going on in the Church. It isn't just school officials that are protecting predatory teachers. It is also the Main Stream Media.

Hat Tip to Justin Paulette at No Left Turns.

Comments

[Guard]

And let me guess Ken, Barack Obama "is to blame" and "in cohoots" with the New York Times in a controversy over all this? LOL...give me a break please...

[Guard]

"controversy"...I meant "conspiracy"...its all a conspiracy right Mr. Blanchard? LOL

[KB]

Guard: I said nothing at all about Obama. The issue here is media bias. The evidence is very strong.

[Guard]

Who cares about the evidence because its used on both sides. FOX News does the same thing, but, somehow in future story, you will come around and blame it on Obama anyway. I mean that's what you do, I understand. You are a blogger and you have an agenda like the media you attack has one too. That's allright if you are into that kinda thing.

[Miranda]

Guard: You'll forgive me if I think that blogging and making an effort to defend ones positions is at least slightly more admirable than criticizing everything but being either too lazy, too unwilling or to afraid to defend a position of one's own.

[Liberty Belle]

Guard, do I have this right - you are fine with the sexual abuse of children and wasting tax money on public school teachers because they happen to be union members? That's disgusting even if "you are into that kinda thing". I'd be willing to bet you voted for Obama, didn't you?

[Guard]

LOL...Liberty, chill out....LOL

[KB]

Guard: I have a hard time telling what is eating you. Yes, I am generally critical of President Obama, though I have on several occasions defended him. Yes, I have an "agenda," if by that you mean an opinion and a purpose in writing. And yes, both sides use evidence and argument against the other. Does that mean that the evidence should be ignored? President Obama is implicated in neither of the above, so speculations about what I might accuse him of in the future are scarcely relevant.

The rubber rooms are symptomatic of the problem that public employee unions represent at this time. In the second half of my post I exactly how the bias of the MSM is hiding a very real public problem. If you can show how my bias distorts these stories, instead of just complaining that I am biased without showing how, then it would profit us both.

[Guard]

KB, nothing is eating me, but, I have clearly been witnessing for years that something is eating you and it's not good. You take this stuff way too seriously. We are discussing issues that you have no control over. So, I'm just trying to help you to realize that life is too short to obsess over these affairs. That's all my friend. Have a great evening.

[William]

Guard, if you feel everything is simply predestined and that we are without free will, then why bother to post?

On the other hand, if we have free will then we must act when we feel compelled to do so. You feel we are discussing issues we have no control over, but I (for one) feel that individuals may have more power than they even realize, when they take action.

All things are indeed in God's hands, but God often chooses mortals to work his will.