June 26, 2009

There are many reasons to push for school choice. Here’s another one.

Seven hundred New York City school teachers are being paid their $70,000 salaries, or more, to do nothing. They are people who have been accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct. They are receiving their full salaries to sit around all day and play Scrabble, surf the Internet, or just stare at the wall.

The 700 teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues, anything but school work. They also get paid summer vacations and weekends and holidays as if they were in the classroom.

They can almost never be fired because of the tenured positions most hold thanks to their union contracts, which also prohibit them from being given other work to do.

I’m all for due process, but this is ridiculous. The contracts sold be changed to allow them to perform other duties while they await settlement of their cases.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.