And now for this week’s installment of Stories from the Rubber Room: today meet Francisco Olivares, a Queens math teacher who knocked up and then married his 16-year-old student, then decades later sexually molested two 12-year-olds and one more student, according to the Department of Education. Like that rich gross lawyer guy profiled last week, he’s sat for years in the Rubber Room, all the while draining the city’s coffers in ever-growing increments.
In 1988 Olivares was found guilty of abusing two pre-teens—one, he photographed with her pants down, another said he rubbed against her from behind, reports the NY Post. But there’s more: in 2002 he backed a girl up against a wall and told her "I'm becoming very fond of you," while stroking her arms. Wow. After that incident Schools Chancellor Joel Klein barred the teacher from the classroom, and his career in the Rubber Room began. When Olivares fought the move, investigators uncovered his marriage and child with a former student (she was 13 when they met, and pregnant three years later).
So far Olivares has spent seven years pushing pencils around on a Rubber Room desk—his yearly salary has bloated to $94,154/year and this time, the teachers union is not standing by their man: "The current system works for no one," United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said, adding that the union "has made repeated attempts to work with the administration to resolve the rubber-room issue, but the administration has preferred to grandstand rather than solve it."
