Metro

Rubber rooms to get bounced

It’s a rubber-room rubout.

The city’s bizarre system that pays bad teachers to sit on their butts in holding pens for ridiculous amounts of time has finally been expelled.

After a years-long campaign by The Post urging officials to solve the disciplinary boondoggle, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday announced a “breakthrough” agreement with the United Federation of Teachers that’s designed to clear a backlog of more than 600 cases by year’s end.

TEACHER #2 ON RUBBER-ROOM SHUT DOWN: HOPING FOR END TO PERSONAL ‘JAIL’

‘WE BROUGHT SOME SANITY TO THE SYSTEM’

The eight teacher-reassignment centers known as rubber rooms — where teachers awaiting hearings sleep, listen to music or play board games all day — will close in June.

The deal will force most educators accused of wrongdoing to work for their earnings in district offices or in non-teaching roles in schools until their cases are resolved.

However, in an apparent victory for the union, those accused of more serious sexual or financial misconduct — and who are deemed too risky to assign to administrative offices or schools — will be allowed to collect their salaries at home as their cases trudge along.

Those charged with felony offenses in Criminal Court will be yanked from their schools, but without pay.

“Given the amount of press that this subject has gotten, to say that this is a big deal is probably an understatement,” Bloomberg said in making the announcement. “The days of suspending teachers [who are then] sitting around and getting paid to do nothing, I’m happy to say, are over.”

The Post’s campaign has exposed at least a half-dozen longtime denizens who have been impossible for the system to cut loose.

Although some of the reassigned educators have been accused of serious sex-related or violent offenses, they have continued to collect their salaries — for as long as seven years — doing absolutely nothing.

Department of Education officials said that about one-third of the 650 educators currently in rubber rooms have not yet been charged. Roughly half of those not charged have criminal investigations pending.

As part of the deal, the city is planning to hire more arbitrators who rule on the evidence — raising the total to 39 from 23 — and to follow strict time limits on the length of probes and hearings.

Education officials confirmed that they’re hiring more internal investigators — something that UFT President Michael Mulgrew has pushed for — but they couldn’t immediately say how many.

“If there’s a disciplinary thing that has to be done — let’s get to it. If someone is going to be exonerated, let’s get them back to the school,” Mulgrew said. “That’s the way this process should work.”

Investigators will be given a 60-day time limit to bring charges for the bulk of allegations of misconduct — and a 10-day time limit to bring charges of incompetence. Otherwise, a teacher will be allowed to return to the classroom.

But the investigations could continue and the teacher could ultimately be yanked again if charges are filed.

Probes of more serious offenses — typically conducted by the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation — will not be confined to 60 days.

Those accused of relatively minor offenses can go through an expedited hearing process of no more than three days, the agreement says.

Bloomberg said that any work done by the teachers would be a boon since their salaries — which totaled some $30 million last year — are already paid for.

Some outsiders warned that the plan could backfire.

“Everything is going to depend on how effective the administration is at charging these teachers with incompetence,” said Marcus Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “If what happens here is that teachers who the city has identified as being really bad . . . go back to the classroom faster, that’s a little worrisome.”

Many of the rubber-roomers praised the deal. “By and large, most people were relieved,” said Jacob Kless, 59, who revealed he was yanked from his substitute-teaching gig for allegedly sending a threatening e-mail to his principal.

Additional reporting by David Seifman and Kevin Fasick

yoav.gonen@nypost.com