Rubber-room supervisors find it hilarious that teachers are dozing on the taxpayer dime, says social-studies teacher David Suker — and he should know, he’s the instructor shown sleeping “on the job” on the front page of Sunday’s Post.
“They would walk in and would laugh or joke about it,” Suker told The Post.
He sat at one of these so-called Department of Education “reassignment centers” from September until last Friday after a state Supreme Court judge overturned his termination for not immediately reporting to higher-ups his arrest in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“They clearly knew I was sleeping, and they never told me not to do it,” said Suker, 47, who provided The Post with a picture of himself napping, he said, in order to expose the do-nothing rooms, which the city insists no longer exist.
“People were sleeping every day,” said Suker, who said nap time is a daily routine for most of the city educators hauled up into rubber rooms, meant for teachers accused of incompetence or misconduct. The Department of Education said rubber rooms were discontinued over five years ago.
Most choose to snooze in their chairs or with their heads on the desks, he explained.
“There was also one person that would go to the bathroom and fall asleep on the toilet,” Suker said. “He needed his privacy.”
Suker, an Army vet who taught at-risk kids in The Bronx, says he was one of three who would practice their A-B-Z’s on the grubby carpet.
“I was in the infantry, and that was just how we dealt with the stresses of that lifestyle. You grab some sleep whenever you can get it,” said Suker, who said his preferred nap time was after lunch.
“It’s mentally grueling to be in a room and have nothing to do. You look for any escape you can get. Some of the only ones you can get are going to the bathroom or going to sleep,” said Suker, who likened the rubber room to being in prison.
“But at least in prison you only have one or two roommates,” he said.
He said more than a dozen others are crammed into a tiny room, two or three to a desk, being punished for minor infractions, such as showing up a minute past 8 a.m.