Teachers Union Charges Misuse of Rubber Room

A special education teacher in Brooklyn who is being sent to one of the city's so-called rubber rooms will be the subject of a protest by the United Federation of Teachers today.

Rubber rooms are holding places where teachers who have been charged with offenses ranging from incompetence to sexual assault await trial.

Teachers in the rubber rooms have long been saying that some among their ranks are not perpetrators but rather victims of retaliation by principals with whom they have butted heads.

The union today will say that the Brooklyn teacher, Kimami Brown, who is also the chapter leader at the school, M.S. 393, is one such victim.

The president of the union, Randi Weingarten, said yesterday that Mr. Brown was asked to leave the school last week after he criticized his principal in front of one of her supervisors.

"She won't ever meet with me or talk to me," Mr. Brown told the supervisor, according to Ms. Weingarten.

"This is the worst abuse of the rubber room," Ms. Weingarten said. "This is a principal who wants her way, and if she doesn't get her way, she'll go to every length."

A spokesman for the city's Department of Education, Andrew Jacob, declined to specifics of the case, but he said the principal had not reassigned the teacher to a rubber room alone.

"Before he was reassigned, the principal reviewed the situation with our legal office, and they approved the reassignment, and they're in the process of preparing charges," Mr. Jacob said.