PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia School District said new procedures have helped to reduce the backlog of teachers assigned to so-called “rubber rooms” during misconduct investigations.
When teachers are accused of serious infractions that warrant temporary removal from the classroom during an investigation, they are reassigned with pay to district headquarters. These reassignment rooms, known as “rubber rooms”, have long been criticized for leaving educators in limbo.
Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Superintendent Tony Watlington acknowledged the district had not been meeting its policy of resolving investigations within 60 to 90 days.
“Individuals have been in that reassignment room process well beyond 90 days, and some were quite egregious. We’re talking about a year plus,” Watlington said.
“I think the most egregious case I saw was maybe close to two years.”
City Council’s education chair, Isaiah Thomas, called for hearings in January to look into the backlog. But at Tuesday’s news conference, Thomas said those hearings are no longer necessary.
“When we started this process, the first thing I heard Dr. Watlington say is, We at 440 [district headquarters] did some things wrong. And before we throw money at the problem, let’s see if we can fix it internally without just hiring more staff,” Thomas said.
“We wanted to see improvement in the communication and the transparency for the people who were going through this process, and we wanted to see significant reduction in the backlog, people who had been here more than three months.”
Watlington said the district has overhauled its intake process and improved its case management system so that supervisors can monitor the length of investigations.
“People did not understand exactly why they were there, and they did not know how long they would be there,” Thomas added.
The district said the number of investigations taking longer than 90 days was down 87 percent between July 2024 and January ’25.