700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_on_re_us/us_rubber_rooms

Your tax dollars hard at work!

"Once their hearings are over, they are either sent back to the classroom or fired. But because their cases are heard by 23 arbitrators who work only five days a month, stints of two or three years in a rubber room are common, and some teachers have been there for five or six."

""The day just seemed to crawl by until I started painting," Cohen said, adding that others read, play dominoes or sleep."

"There was a bar across the street," Saunders said. "Teachers would sneak out and hang out there for hours."