A Kafkaesque Nightmare in NYC Public Schools

Apparently teachers who have accusations against them can spend months or years in isolated "rubber rooms" without even knowing what they are ever accused of:

Hundreds of New York City teachers removed from classrooms on a wide range of allegations are sent to offices that are called "rubber rooms."

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Here's how it works: a teacher shows up for class, but is handed an envelope. Inside it reads there are allegations against you. Please go to this address. Eventually that turns out to be a rubber room like one CBS 2 HD saw on West 125th Street. But months can go by before a person finds out what the charges are against him or her, and those months can turn into years.

"I have never been, ah … received formal charges," Holmes said.

Holmes has been teaching special ed for seven years. He was put in the rubber room over a year ago and is still waiting to find out what the charges are.

When asked what it was like to walk in see other people in that room, Holmes said his first thought was, "I walked into hell."

"They want to drain us emotionally, so that we will resign," said Dr. Anna Maria Thomas, a reinstated teacher.

After 19 months of doing nothing in a rubber room, Thomas finally got charges of verbally abusing students dismissed. But she is still part of a federal suit against the city to close the rubber rooms.

"The suit says that the rubber rooms are an unconstitutional denial of due process," lawyer Joy Hochstadt said.

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Most of the rubber room teachers are waiting to be declared guilty or innocent on charges like incompetence. By contrast, criminal cases, on arrests for things like sex with students, are often handled separately -- and faster -- by police and the district attorney's office.