The Department of Education's infamous "rubber rooms"—where DOE employees under scrutiny were sent to sit around and read the paper all day while collecting their paychecks—are supposed to be dead and gone. But one Staten Island teacher is making a pretty good argument that they didn't die, they merely mutated. Say hello to the most boring series of video streams on the world wide web:
The man you see before you is reassigned IS 49 teacher Francesco Portelos, who hasn't been back in a classroom since last April, as he makes very clear on his blog. According to Portelos, he was pulled from his teaching position for pointing out potential financial misconduct at the school he worked at. According to a DOE spokeswoman, he was pulled because he "has been extremely difficult to work with, was transferred twice, and there are multiple investigations pending against him."
Either way, Portelos is certainly not teaching now and is making $75,000 a year for his troubles. So what is he doing? As far as the video feeds he posted yesterday go, it seems he is sitting around alone in an empty conference room. And he's not happy about it—hence the videos. "I want people to see where their tax dollars are going," he says. Of course the video feed has lots of breaks, so maybe he is doing some paperwork in between takes, but it still is pretty damning.
According to Portelos his days are now spent in "a conference room with a table and chairs and filing cabinets. That’s it. I’m not given any work. It feels like I’m a rat in a cage."
The DOE says that rubber rooms no longer exist and that teachers are assigned to administrative duties instead. But some teachers have said they aren't actually being given any duties while their cases are investigated, and Portelos appears to be backing that up. It'll be interesting to see if any more of his home movies make it online today now that the story has gone wide.
Update: Seems that Portelos is still at it today—with a nice new sign, too!
