What happens in Philadelphia schools stays in Philadelphia schools — or so it seems based on the District’s lack of transparency.
As The Inquirer uncovered recently, the Philadelphia School District has detained employees in “rubber rooms.” These windowless rooms, formally known as “reassignment rooms,” house District employees under investigation for misconduct.
The District has been tight-lipped about what happens in these rooms, but it isn’t productive. According to reports, employees in the rubber room receive a full salary and benefits without any work to do.
Some teachers call it “teacher jail,” but they seem to have a great deal of freedom. Some read. Some tour the city after clocking in and only return to check out. Some sleep while others form “romantic relationships.” They bring lounge chairs and throw parties. For many employees, this goes on for months — and sometimes years.
Yet, only District bureaucrats know how many teachers and education dollars languish in these rooms. And the District isn’t sharing that information.
The Commonwealth Foundation filed Right to Know requests, asking the District for a handful of public records showing this information. The questions were simple: How many employees have been “reassigned” to the rubber rooms over the last 15 years? How long have the employees been there? How much money did the District spend on staff to do nothing?
But the District made every effort to avoid accountability, rejecting requests at every turn.
According to the District’s lawyers, the public records request was too vague, required too much work, involved too many records, or would expose the subject matter of noncriminal investigations (something that the District could easily redact). They even argued that the data was housed on computer programs that could not produce printed reports.
Idle teachers receiving full pay and benefits is wasteful and betrays taxpayers’ trust. And if it’s more expensive to fire a bad teacher than to pay them to sit in a rubber room, state lawmakers must hold school districts accountable for wasting public funds.
The request also asked for public records showing communications between District officials and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), whose president, Art Steinberg has said that he is “strongly in favor of attacking bureaucratic inefficiencies … in order to free precious resources that could be redirected into classrooms.” However, PFT and its affiliate union, the American Federation of Teachers, have been intimately involved in past disputes (like this one involving a teacher at Mayfair Elementary in 2021) involving these rooms (including a high-profile 2014 case in New York), so this is far from breaking news.
District officials refused to release records involving communication between them and PFT. Again, they argued that the request required too broad of a search. A follow-up request asked for communications with only certain employees, but the District balked at that, too.
The Commonwealth Foundation isn’t the only organization concerned about the rubber rooms. Earlier this year, the Philadelphia City Council resolved to investigate the issue. But once the District announced nominal reforms and their intent to fix underlying issues that make rubber rooms possible, Council retreated. That was a mistake. As with New York City schools, rubber rooms don’t disappear just because district bureaucrats say so.
The District’s secrecy undermines PA’s Right-to-Know Law, which allows everyday citizens to access government records. The legal burden is on the government — not the citizens — to prove that the records are exempt from public scrutiny.
That’s why the Commonwealth Foundation petitioned the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas to reverse the District’s denial of records. We’re asking the Court to make the District turn over all records on rubber rooms. If these rooms are simply a temporary reassignment tool, the District can clarify by showing the records. However, if the District has misused these rooms, the public deserves to know that, too
Ultimately, this scandal negatively impacts kids and taxpayers.
Philadelphia students have been underserved for years. Nearly one in four traditional public school students don’t graduate. Policymakers must help kids get the education they deserve.
Idle teachers receiving full pay and benefits is wasteful and betrays taxpayers’ trust. And if it’s more expensive to fire a bad teacher than to pay them to sit in a rubber room, state lawmakers must hold school districts accountable for wasting public funds.
But the most effective reform is simple: sunlight. The public should know what’s happening in Philadelphia’s rubber rooms — and the District must stop hiding this valuable information.
David R. Osborne is the Senior Director of Labor Policy with the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.
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