NYC to stop paying teachers to do nothing

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of New York City teachers who are paid full salaries to do nothing while they await disciplinary hearings will be released from the city's "rubber rooms" this fall, officials announced today.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the teachers' union announced a deal to reassign most of the teachers to administrative or nonclassroom work while their cases are pending.

About 650 educators, more than 500 of them teachers, are in the teacher-reassignment centers, costing the city tens of millions of dollars a year, including $30 million in salaries, officials said.

The teachers generally spend months or even years in the so-called rubber rooms playing Scrabble, reading or surfing the Internet while still collecting full salaries of $70,000 a year or more.

The nickname refers to the padded cells of asylums, and teachers have said the name is fitting, since some of the inhabitants can become unstable.