Teacher has no classroom, earns $100,000

A non-teaching elementary school teacher in New York City earning $100,000 annually is a danger to students but won't retire, administrators say. In a school system with numerous protections for tenured teachers, 66-year-old Alan Rosenfeld reports daily to the Division of School Facilities, a Long Island warehouse. "Permanently reassigned" after a 2001 incident involving lewd comments to eighth-graders, the New York Post reported Sunday, his workday involves little but managing his personal real estate portfolio and pursuing his law practice. An unidentified friend of Rosenfeld said the teacher is "happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system." The city's Department of Education, which has no mandatory retirement age, admits he cannot be fired, and cannot return to a classroom. Meanwhile, his pension grows by $1,700 annually, and his health benefits, sick pay and vacation pay are retained. "It's a tremendous waste of money," said Marcus Walters of the Manhattan Institute, an expert on teacher evaluation. "While we don't want to remove people just because they've been accused, we also want the school system to cut ties with teachers it's not going to put in the classroom." The Post reported Rosenfeld is one of seven teachers with a similar assignment, costing the city $650,000 in salaries annually.