All American Blogger » L.A. School Teachers Paid $10 Million A Year Not to Teach

L.A. School Teachers Paid $10 Million A Year Not to Teach

Posted by Duane Lester on May 7th, 2009 • Clicks

It wasn’t to long ago I wrote about the United Auto Worker’s job bank, a deal the union struck with the auto companies to house union workers while they waited to be retrained. Workers sat around in break rooms doing crossword puzzles for $26 an hour.

It takes a lot to make that seem remotely normal, but the Los Angeles Unified School District has done it. They are paying teachers to the tune of $10 million a year to sit while they are investigated for misconduct. One teacher has been “housed” for seven years. He has been accused of sexual misconduct with both students and staff, but claims it is because of his cerebral palsy:

Despite severely restricted movement and speech that was hard to understand, Kim racked up remarkable achievements before beginning his teaching career.

As a child he learned to paint with a brush and to type with a stick — both held in his mouth. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from UC Berkeley, then went on to get two master’s degrees, one in astrophysics and the other in special education. He was also active in the disability rights movement.

When he applied for a full-time teaching job, he was turned down by more than 15 schools in L.A. Unified, he said in a 1999 letter filed in court. Only after he threatened to sue the district for disability discrimination did he get a teaching job at Grant High School, records show.

Kim’s troubles with the district began in 2000, when a classroom aide reported inappropriate comments and advances.

In class one October day, according to her testimony before an administrative panel, Kim asked her to stand closer to him while interpreting his speech for the students. When she moved closer, she said, he touched her breast with his left hand, the only one he could slightly control.

Students immediately started making comments about what they’d seen. One said: “Oh, come on, Mr. Kim, you know you liked it,” according to a summary of allegations against Kim prepared by a state review panel in 2008. Kim responded to the students that he had.

Over the next two years, another adult and six students would make similar complaints against Kim,according to the summary.

The same month the aide complained, Kim asked a girl if she had a boyfriend and if she was a virgin, according to the girl’s testimony during an administrative hearing.

Another girl said that Kim kept staring at her and urged her at one point not to change her hair color, according to documents filed with the state.

This behavior continued even after being warned.

Complaints of misconduct kept coming, according to district records filed in court.

After a male classroom aide reported that he had seen Kim touch a girl on the shoulders and near her crotch, Walker asked for advice from L.A. Unified’s personnel division. The principal noted that Kim “has been charged with sexual harassment for the fourth time within a one-year period,” according to his December 2001 memo in court files.

Two months later, a school counselor complained that Kim ran his hand back and forth across one of her breasts during a meeting, according to the court filings and the commission summary.

Walker now wanted Kim out, and the district personnel department agreed.

“I wasn’t big on firing people because I knew what you had to go through,” Walker said in a recent interview. He also was afraid Kim would sue him for discrimination.

But after so many complaints, Walker said he had no choice. “I was really compelled to do something,” he said.

In February 2002, the district ordered Kim housed at an administration building while the allegations were formally investigated. The school board voted to fire Kim in October 2003.

Kim fought the dismissal, claiming disability discrimination, the same charge he filed to get the job. To this day, he is still being housed, only now, the school has asked him to stay at home because the office housing teachers on paid leave is getting too crowded.

This problem isn’t exclusive to Los Angeles:

In New York City public schools, which make up the country’s largest district, teachers are confined to “rubber rooms.” About 550 of the district’s 80,000 teachers spend school hours “literally just doing crossword puzzles, waiting for the end of the day” until their cases are resolved, spokeswoman Ann Forte said. Some have been there for years.

In Chicago, the dismissal process moves faster and the 30 teachers waiting for their cases to be resolved are assigned clerical tasks. “They’ve got to be doing something,” senior assistant general counsel James Ciesil said.

San Francisco Unified employees are either sent home or assigned to tasks such as working in warehouses, doing inventory or answering phones, said Jolie Wineroth, the district’s senior executive director for human resources.

“I don’t want to give anyone a free vacation,” she said.

It is the union contract that required L.A. Unified teachers sit idle, at a cost of $10 million a year.

Had this been a private school, it would have been a bit different. Such as, “Oh, you made another inappropriate sexual comment to a female student. And you have been warned about this before? Get out! No, no, no. Shut up. Get Out.”

But instead, the unions fight for teachers who touch kids and make sexual references, and the Democrats fight for the unions by getting vouchers shut down.