Iris Stevenson's passion for music brought awards and national renown to one of L.A.'s toughest schools. Iris Stevenson

“They knew the exact itinerary,” she told America Tonight, “down to the telephone numbers.”

Schiller, an AP science and psychology teacher at Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, knows what his alleged misconduct is: allowing students to create experiments with the word “gun” in the title for a science fair.

At first, he said he was told to stay home for five days. And then it was off to teacher jail.

“Absolute, complete and total shock,” Schiller said about his reaction. “I worried a lot about my students. What were they going to do without me?”

The experience in jail depends on where the teachers serve time. Schiller said he was allowed to talk, but knows of other places where you’re forced to sit in silence. In his jail in the district’s headquarters, he was told to make lesson plans, but said he was banned from giving them to the substitute teacher.

Stevenson spent her time writing music that her students would never sing.

“I saw in teacher jail many individuals who were broken, depressed, suicidal,” she said.

Teacher jail is a place shrouded in mystery. No one knows for sure how many Los Angeles educators are “jailed” or how long they’ve been there. Under pressure, the district changed its policy in May to relocate teachers on paid detention to serve times in their homes, rather than administrative offices. But district teachers and their union say the whole system is still unjust, with a seemingly endless wait for investigations into behavior that pose no imminent danger to students.

The union also believes there’s something suspect about the types of teachers that end up in jail in the first place.