The city's Department of Eduction just can't help paying employees to do nothing. Though the DOE's infamous rubber rooms have been well documented, it seems the department has other ways to compensate educators for services not rendered. According to DOE documents obtained by the NY Post, several employees quietly stopped reporting for work but kept collecting pay checks for as long as a year.
Janet Strobel, a school psychologist, simply stopped showing up for substitute teaching assignments but still netted $108,000 for a year's work. A reporter confronted Strobel outside her Queens home and asked her "why she accepted payment when she hadn’t been working?" She replied, “That’s none of your business.” But the answer seems pretty obvious—if Stupid Bureaucrat A wants to pay Lazy Educator B roughly $100K to sit on her ass and watch QVC all day, what is the probability that B will quietly cash A's checks and say nothing?
Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon noted this problem in March 2011, writing in a report that "It is a recurring problem that DOE employees disappear from assignments for long periods of time but continue to get paid. No one accepts responsibility for the mistake." And earlier this year, Condon wrote, "The problem continues, and the DOE has not reported a plan to correct it."
According to documents obtained by the Post, one teacher was paid $115,000 from Dec. 2009 through Sept. 2011 without working a day, while a Bronx teacher's aide was allegedly overpaid $31,000 for taking unapproved time off with a wrist injury. All three employees have since been terminated, and a DOE spokesperson insists that new protocols are in fact in place, and "anyone who does not show up for an assignment is immediately reported for further investigation." Remember that time the DOE swore it had gotten rid of the rubber rooms?
