Why Filmmakers Need Release Forms

From The New York Post

By DAVID ANDREATTA and MURRAY WEISS

April 19, 2007 — A former art teacher was bounced from one of the city school system’s so-called “rubber rooms” by cops yesterday after he began filming for a documentary inside without permission, police said.

Jeremy Garrett, 30, working on a film called “The Rubber Room,” was charged with criminal trespass for entering the reassignment center at 25 Chapel St. in Brooklyn and turning on his camera to the chagrin of dozens of teachers.

“There’s a stigma surrounding the reassignment of teachers to a place called the rubber room,” said one teacher at the center. “He was surrounded by people who objected.”

Thirteen such centers scattered throughout the city act as holding pens for some 500 teachers who are either facing administrative charges or are unwanted by the system but cannot be fired outright because they are tenured.

Garrett taught at Graphic Communication Arts HS in Manhattan from September 2000 until his resignation in January 2006, according to the Department of Education. There is no record of him ever being assigned to a rubber room.