The city and the teachers union have reached an agreement to shut down the so-called "rubber rooms" - a limbo for educators accused of wrongdoing - by the end of the year.

About 550 teachers and 630 school employees report to reassignment centers after being accused of serious violations ranging from incompetence to sexual misconduct. 

At a cost of more than $30 million a year, the teachers sit for weeks or months in the centers in each borough - reading the paper, playing board games or napping - while waiting for their cases to wind through the system.

"The rubber rooms are a thing of the past," said Mayor Bloomberg at a ceremony to sign the surprise agreement Thursday .

"To say this is a big deal is probably an understatement. It goes to show that when you work together, when you cooperate, you can do things."

The agreement would bar any new teachers accused of violations from being put in the rubber rooms starting in September.

Instead, they would be assigned to administrative duties outside the school or, if the cases are relatively minor, they may be reassigned to non-teaching duties in the school.

Educators accused of serious sexual or financial misconduct would be suspended with pay, or, in the most serious cases, they would be suspended without pay.

"This agreement is designed to get teachers out of the rubber rooms and to ensure that they do not have to wait for months or years to have their cases heard," UFT President Mulgrew said.

In order to speed up the process and work through the back log of educators exiled to the rubber rooms, the number of arbitrators who hear cases would expand from 23 to 39. And they could hear seven incompetence cases a month, instead of five.

And while it now takes months for a teacher to be charged, the agreement limits that time to 60 days.

After that time period, a teacher could return to a school.

Then once the hearings began, the case could not drag on past 60 days. A previous agreement between the city and the union to fix the problems of the rubber room failed - and the number of staffers waiting to be formally charged increased to 152 in April 2009 from 99 in January 2008.

That agreement had called for increasing the number of arbitrators, but only three additional ones were hired because of budget problems.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/04/15/2010-04-15_city_to_close_rubber_rooms_reassignment_centers_for_teachers_accused_of_major_vi.html#ixzz0lE4yhNFr