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Our Schools Need More Money? Oh Yeah, What About Francisco Olivares?
Written By : John Hawkins

It’s a never ending cycle in this country: You point out that the public schools are doing a lousy job, they claim to be underfunded, they’re given a lot more money, a few years later people point out that the public schools are still doing a lousy job, and the whole cycle repeats. Yet, if you point out that the schools are doing a terrible job of using the money they have, you hear sad stories about how teachers can’t afford notebooks or erasers for their classrooms.

Of course, you never hear about how much money is being wasted on administrative costs and because of ridiculous union rules. For example, look at the case of Francisco Olivares:

Three strikes and he wasn’t out.

At the beginning of his 32-year career as a math teacher in Queens, Francisco Olivares allegedly impregnated and married a 16-year-old girl he had met when she was a 13-year-old student at his Corona junior high, IS 61, The Post learned.

He sexually molested two 12-year-old pupils a decade later and another student four years after that, the city Department of Education charged.
But none of it kept Olivares, 60, from collecting his $94,154 salary.
He hasn’t set foot in a classroom in seven years since beating criminal and disciplinary charges. Chancellor Joel Klein keeps Olivares in a “rubber room,” a district office where teachers accused of misconduct sit all day with nothing to do.

The DOE insists it can’t get rid of him. “The department’s hands are tied by state law and union rules,” said spokeswoman Ann Forte.

She said tenured teachers can be fired only if an arbitrator approves.
“The department twice tried to terminate this teacher, and both times, an arbitrator decided to keep him on the payroll,” she said.

Most of the 660 rubber-room teachers on the city payroll are awaiting disciplinary proceedings, but Klein has exiled “a handful” of duds like Olivares even though they have been legally cleared to return to class.

His salary is $94,154 and he hasn’t taught in seven years. Instead, he has been sitting around in a room, with 660 other teachers, twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing. Gee, how many erasers, notebooks, and school supplies could be bought with the money these teachers are being paid to do absolutely nothing?

You know what would really improve our public schools? Dumping the unions, their rubber rooms, and their “put the children’s education last” attitude.

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  • Smithwick

    But the problem isn’t with the teachers unions that protect people like this. Just a few more bucks and everything will be alright.

    Well I suppose if you keep people uneducated they won’t be able to figure out that all of those nations outperforming our students spend substantially less per student than we do, and they will buy the line that “we just need to give the schools more money”. That’s job security.

  • Mike_M

    Hey, as Rahm Emannuel says, why waste a good crisis? Great time for school districts to terminate union contracts and start reposting jobs.

    I wonder how long teachers are going to man the picket lines for their pals getting paid to do nothing when their job prospects are zero and others would be lining up to do the work?

    That and public opinion would turn on them in a nanosecond once stories like this get out as the cause.

  • NorthernCanuck

    I wonder if he’s gotten any raises in those seven years? And 98 grand for a teacher?

  • http://conservativebootcamp.com martinhale

    “I wonder if he’s gotten any raises in those seven years?”

    Sight unseen, I’d be willing to plunk down a bundle on the side that says “yep, he’s gotten raises in his seven years of ‘rubber room’-ing it”. I’ve never seen a union contract in which a union has agreed to do such a thing – and quite rightly so. The more division and disunity amongst members a contract provision creates, the higher the likelihood that the current union leadership is on their way out the door.

    “And 98 grand for a teacher?”

    Well, close – it’s actually $94.1k. But the point you’re making still stands. Most teachers contracts I’ve looked at have a number of pay grades for teachers with varying levels of academic preparation, e.g. BA, BA + 15 credit hours, MA, MA + 15 credit hours, Ed/PhD. The pay grades start out modestly enough at the BA and BA + levels; they pick up at the MA level; and the rates usually get pretty high when you’re talking about a Master’s prepared teacher with perhaps half of his/her doctorate or who has a doctorate degree. And remember NC, depending on the school system, this could be for a 9-month a year job.

    Of course by slavishly focusing on the academic preparation of the teachers and by conditioning future employment on tenure, or lack thereof, the school system completely misses the boat on the most important aspect of any teacher’s attributes – his/her effectiveness in the classroom. That topic puts the unions into full ‘ostrich’ mode – hiding their heads in the sand until the danger passes.

  • http://www.conservablogs.com/theconservativecrawfish/ reelman

    $250 MIL MORE…WASTED ON TRAINING TEACHERS

    JAN 6.2010: President Obama is announcing a $250 million initiative Wednesday to train math and science teachers in an effort to reach his administration’s goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in those subjects over the next decade.
    =====
    As a 35 year science classroom teacher (last 27 in cmty college)…this is again the wrong solution to the ignored problems. The problems of modern education are NOT teacher-centered. Education has been decaying for 40 years because modern liberalism (aka secular socialism) has infected what once was all about “teaching and learning”.
    Education is now about feelings, diversity, quotas, overcoming awful parenting, avoiding needed discipline and inflating grades. This mess is made worse by the federal-state gov-meant “bean counters” that dog school systems with their constant form-deadlines-policy-procedures-guidelines changing meddling.
    Teacher unions demand higher salaries but most teachers, if asked off the record, would quickly tell you its the liberal culture which removes shame and respect, the free lunch-victim worship attitude, the gutless admins failing to remove disruptive students and the shifting always increasing paperwork.
    Parents have only ONE duty…only ONE. The one parental duty is to send a respectful child to school willing to learn. These days a large percentage simply fail that one duty. In order to overcome this the school systems waste millions of dollars, millions of teaching minutes and thus condemn those worthy students to less teaching…week after week and year after year.
    Truth be known, many hundreds of systems lose 25-50% of teaching time simply because they are under the “discipline quota-image” gov-meant mandates. There are so many bureaucrats that lawyers and thick “Policies and Procedures” manuals are now the center of the educational universe.
    Teaching and learning time are simply paper mirages when closely examined. The admins often run for cover and blameshift to avoid the mandate hassles. There are a legion of special hired people now buzzing around the schools “monitoring” because locals are not trusted anymore. Systems have learned to lie, to fudge, to postpone and to get do-overs or exemptions.
    Reality is never a gov-meant option. Systems with 80% free lunch high risk children are treated as if they are not. Improvement is under stressed and grades are inflated accordingly. Graduation rates are another national scam to fool the public. Then those children attempt college prep tests and are hammered. Self-esteem is worshipped over responsibility, over reality, over all.
    I taught public high school 1971-75. Just over 20% of my students failed yearly. Most passed the next year. They got what they earned. Try that now. Try half that now.
    Only in sports do students get what they earn. In the classroom its never the students or parents’ fault while on the field or in the gym we see the last glimpse of reality. Its performance, its what you do…not what you feel you can do or should do or be given or mandated by quota.
    Every new administration repeats the same flawed approach to “reforming” education. That approach has failed for 40 years, but hey, the gov-meant knows all. Our public community college science division was shocked at the decline in pass rates around 1985…so we met and reduced the material on each test to 3 chapters then to almost entirely 2 chapters. During those years the grades continued to decay despite halving the course material. A Learning Center was added with sample tests (actually 30% the test questions) and small bonus assignments. That did not stop the grade decay. Some admin reactions to grade decay were…”remember each student is $3,500 from the state…it looks bad…you faculty need to adjust…we will lose students to other schools”. They put some coaches into classrooms and allowed them to pack their classes way beyond normal limits. The coaches inflated grades off the scale but were never called to account. Later some students started e mailing us about how certain faculty at our community college “did not prep them for the university”. We forwarded them to the admins. No response, reality denied.
    Been there done that. A high school teaching buddy was made to remove his Top Ten averages posted on his lab wall. The admin said “it might hurt other’s feelings”. Why do we have a Top Ten high school football team listing then? Reality denied. Ask if your school would ban this too. What does that tell you about where we are now?
    If money (or teaching or curricula or teacher training) was the solution I would not be writing this post.
    The educational scams continue because its no longer about learning or reality or ethics…
    its about keeping (bureaucrats), students and parents perfectly happy 8 hours a day…as if that prepared them for the real world of work.
    I have subbed from 2nd to 11th grade since retirement. You don’t want me to start on that.
    http://conservablogs.com/theconservativecrawfish

  • Power_System_Oper

    Administrative costs yes, but that has little connection to the union which represents the worker bees in the class rooms.
    I can recall when grade school principles, junior high principles, high school vice principles and the counselors also doubled as full time class room teachers. The only paid staff who did not teach were the high school principle, school superintendent, custodians who also doubled as bus drivers, and a few office secretaries attached to the office space set aside for the high school principle and superintendent which was located in the high school building.

    The above scenario is the basic reason America has become non competitive in the global market. Over the years, governing boards in both the public and private sectors have allowed hoards of drone bureaucrats to replace worker bees. The classic hierarchial pyramid has been turned upside down. In almost all large organizations both public and private a few worker bees at the bottom now support swarms of drones who add no value.

  • http://conservativebootcamp.com martinhale

    Posted by Power_System_Oper

    Classic hoggo comment. Five misused homophones in one comment and even after wading through those, the whole comment is just a really weak attempt at deflection. The teachers union has “little connection” to the charade that is Francisco Olivares? Really, hoggo? In spite of that unequivocal statement made by the DoE rep – you remember, the one that goes “The department’s hands are tied by state law and union rules”?

    What makes you so easy to laugh at hoggo is that you’re comically rigid in your ideology. Apparently you can’t even conceive of the union being a major part of the problem in this case. In a world which is dynamic and ever-changing, such rigidity and dogmatism can only make you look quaintly anachronistic and out-of-touch.

  • Power_System_Oper

    martinhale,

    Lets put aside that fact that you along with mightysamuri resort to calling me a pig (real adult behavior there).

    The DOE Rep says state rules and the union prevent said teacher from being fired. That is BS and a typical response from a drone bee managagment type bureaucrat who is too lazy and/or too inept to do the homework necessary on their part to prevail in a labor arbitration case (especially a firing which is equivalent to capital punishment in a crimminal case). Workers represented by a union contract which allows for arbitration in cases of dismissal are entitled to due process.
    If management is too lazy or too inept to present a solid case before an arbitrator, that is not the union’s fault. Blaming the union in such an instance is like blaming a defense attorney for an accused crimminal going free because the prosecutor was not up to the task in the trial.

  • http://conservativebootcamp.com martinhale

    The DOE Rep says state rules and the union prevent said teacher from being fired. That is BS and a typical response from a drone bee managagment type bureaucrat who is too lazy and/or too inept to do the homework necessary on their part to prevail in a labor arbitration case (especially a firing which is equivalent to capital punishment in a crimminal case).

    And you know that the two prior arbitration cases were lost due to management incompetence or laziness, how? You have detailed knowledge of the two arbitration cases at hand which tells you that? Do you even know where you’d find information about the arbitration cases in the first place? So tell us, oh great labour law guru – what exactly does it take to get a teacher fired in that jurisdiction? Have you ever personally prepared a case for arbitration? Do you have any idea what hurdles the DoE might have faced in mounting a winning case in said arbitration cases? Can you unequivocally state that the two times the firing of Mr. Olivares was denied by an arbitrator that it was denied solely because of management incompetence or laziness, or is that just what you want to believe? Do you even know what other reasons there might be for DoE not prevailing in the arbitration cases? Do you know what the record of past practice with respect to this agency terminating employees has been? Can you summarise how that past practice might have affected the outcome of the two times the case has been brought to arbitration? I’m guessing that you’re drawing blanks on each of those questions, because as is usual for you, hoggo, you’re talking about things of which you have no knowledge or clue. What’s funny is that after you say really stupid things about things of which you know nothing, then you wonder why people don’t respect your opinions. Could there possibly be a connection, old man?

    Can you even do anything other than to mouth over-generalised platitudes reflecting your bias against management while rigidly sticking to your dogmatic union talking points? Do you have any facts at your disposal with which you can make a case for something, or is this just another one of your patented oppositional tirades based on how things feel to you? You hate management, so it’s obviously management incompetence/laziness that caused the two arbitration decisions to go against DoE. That bias of yours means that the spokesperson is automatically a, what was it you called her, oh yeah, “a drone bee management type bureaucrat who is too lazy and/or too inept to do the homework necessary on their part to prevail in a labor arbitration case”. Sure thing sport. There’s no anti-management bias in you, is there? /sarc

    You have no idea about any of the details of this case and you’re just waving your arms and screeching about management incompetence without knowing a damn thing about the case at hand. It’s your MO; it’s what you do; it’s what you’ve always done; it’s your raison d’etre for being here in the first place.

    But I’ve saved the dullest, stupidest thing you said for last:

    (especially a firing which is equivalent to capital punishment in a crimminal case)

    Really? Really? Firing someone is equivalent to executing someone? Well, I think I’ve figured out what your problem is – you’re nuts if you really believe the two to be equivalent of one another. Execution is final, my fine glirine friend – it’s the act of depriving someone of his/her future existence. It’s the end of the story for the person executed. Firing? Uh, yeah, not so much. The person who got fired picks up the pieces and moves on to their next job. From a legal perspective, the standards of proof in the two matters are completely different – so different in fact that we have developed two types of courts, each with different procedural and evidentiary rules to hear the two types of cases. In a capital case, if the person or people deciding the case get it wrong, a person dies – they no longer exist – no more ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. In a wrongful termination case, or employment tribunal, if the person or people making the decision get it wrong, a person has to…wait for it…here it comes…get another job. So those two are equivalent in your mind? Losing your life = having to find another job. What a stupid thing to say, and definitely something to go into the Hoggo files for future reference. And obviously, you thought that was an important “point” to make. It was important enough that you included it your comment – like it was going to help win an argument, or something. What a dolt you are.

    Even a Hollywood script writer would be hard pressed come up with a character as dull as you act, hoggo. While it’s really fun to laugh at stupidity such as that – it’s scary to think that stupidity like that is contributing to running our power system.

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