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Unemployed NYC Teacher Compensation Causing Stir

Highly Paid Substitutes Upsetting New Teachers Project

NEW YORK (CBS) ― There is a fight brewing over teachers who lose their jobs but continue to get paid. It pits education officials against the teachers' union and it is costing taxpayers millions.

If you listen to an organization that has management contracts with the Department of Education, more than 100 teachers have been collecting full salaries for more than two years to work as overpaid substitute teachers.

"By the end of this schools year the Department of Education will have spent $81 million on teachers in the reserve pool over the last two years," said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teachers project. "The school system could come up with lots of uses for that money."

At issue are teachers who lost their jobs because a school closed, a program was eliminated or student enrollment dropped.

A report by the New Teachers Project, a non-profit group which works with the Department of Education to recruit and train teachers, found that of the 2,700 teachers who found themselves without a job in the last two years, 235 were still jobless and collecting salaries two years later. More than 100 never even looked for jobs, the report says.

"For teachers who can't find a school to hire them there isn't an adequate policy framework," Daly said.

Teachers' union president Randi Weingarten says it's a case of blaming the victim.

"We're going to see more and more of the city school system taking on its teachers," Weingarten said.

Weingarten charges that the New Teachers Project issued its report to help the Department of Education in its war with teachers. She says school officials have fallen down on the job in terms of teacher placement.

"The city school system has an obligation by contract to place people in positions unless a principal doesn't want them. They've failed miserably at that."

A spokesman for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says the union should agree to a plan to stop paying teachers after a fixed period of time.

This is the second time in recent weeks the teachers' union and the Department of Education have locked horns. The last time was over the refusal of the Legislature to allow the city to use student test scores in granting tenure.

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