Today a friend on Facebook brought the name "Alan Rosenfeld" to my attention and I was appalled at what I found when I began looking info up.
The short version is that in 2001, Alan Rosenfeld, was accused of making lewd comments to and hitting on teenage girls (middle school age) at the school he was working at. But the teachers' union couldn't fire him, so instead he is paid with taxpayer money to sit around in a location off campus and not teach (though apparently he has been running his law office and making real estate deals during all this). He's made $700 thousand over the last 8 years this way, and with his perfect attendance has accumulated 435 sick days. Already eligible for retirement, (he is 64) he could retire today and collect a pension of $82k a year, but instead he waits, because his pension grows each year he puts off retirement.
And he is not unique - This sort of thing (paying teachers to sit in a DOE "rubber room" and not teach) is costing taxpayers $65 MILLION PER YEAR.
You want to start turning the economy in the right direction? How about NOT wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on paying people to sit around doing nothing and instead fire them like one would be in any other non-union situation???
more here:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/school_creep_bQL5kouK80obW5MhZRyq7J