There seems to be some disagreement on whether the
"rubber room agreement" of April 2010 has actually achieved its purpose of expediting cases of teachers who are accused of misconduct or incompetence within a 60 day period.once it is presented to an Arbitrator. By and large the
"rubber room agreement" has achieved that purpose. However, the Arbitration part of the 3020-a process is just a piece of the teacher disciplinary process. For example
the DOE can take their time in investigating the accusation against the teacher by asking OSI or SCI to investigate the misconduct charge while having the teacher removed until the investigation process is concluded. Just ask Francesco Portelos For SCI investigations, it can take up to a year to complete. Moreover, if the teacher is charged criminally, the DOE can sit back and wait for the conclusion of the criminal case before charging the teacher with misconduct. I personally know of one case where a teacher has been sitting in a network office for three years after being charged criminally. However, he was cleared by a Grand Jury and no criminal charges were filed. Still the DOE has not moved forward to either charge the teacher with misconduct under section 3020-a or send him back to school. Furthermore, the DOE and UFT can't seem to keep their arbitrators who do not like the idea of waiting years to be paid by the State and the few arbitrators that oversee the cases have full schedules. Therefore, there is a long wait for cases to be assigned to the few arbitrators available for the 3020-a process.
![]()
Has the
"rubber room agreement" worked? The answer is a qualified yes when it comes to the length of the Arbitration process but teachers can still sit for years before the 3020-a arbitration process actually begins.
