They pulled the plug.
The Department of Education is now preventing a teacher from live-streaming his painfully dull and costly work days spent in a “rubber room” by barring him from bringing any computer equipment into his holding pen.
IS 49 teacher Francesco Portelos had ramped up his battle against the DOE last week by letting online viewers watch him do nothing but paw at a laptop for hours on end in an Ozone Park, Queens, conference room.
He used his own tablet, which has a streaming program and camera.
The 33-year-old tech teacher was yanked from the classroom in April after administrators at his Staten Island school accused him of misconduct — and he still earns his $75,000 salary sitting idly in an office.
“I’m told not to bring any computer equipment into the reassignment facility — so I guess that’s it. Stay tuned,” Portelos said on an 80-second clip he posted yesterday in lieu of the live stream.
He said officials finally gave him some work to do — creating lesson plans in science — after he raised a stink.
But he claimed the menial task was still a waste of his talent and of taxpayer dollars.
“I’m an educator. I need to be back in the classroom, and not in a conference room doing lesson plans,” said the former engineer, who has characterized the allegations against him as retaliation for whistleblowing.
Earlier this year Portelos accused an administrator at IS 49 of double-dipping by collecting overtime from the city while getting paid by an outside agency for after-school work.
DOE officials hinted late last week that they intended to end Portelos’ short-lived live-streaming hobby while he awaits the outcome of probes by the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation.
“We are taking action to address this situation,” a DOE spokeswoman said Friday.
Portelos is among 218 educators awaiting investigations or disciplinary hearings while reassigned to what officials characterize as administrative duty.
Many of the reassigned staffers have said they’re not given any work to do while they sit in holding pens known as rubber rooms, which were supposedly abolished in 2010.