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| | | Laying off teachers | | October 16, 2009 | | | | You can call it a reduction in force or right-sizing, but mass layoffs are sure to create a lot of pain and emotion. And when it involves government agency, there's ample political hand-wringing as well.
We wish the record were clearer on the cause and implementation of the D.C. Public Schools' removal of 338 employees, including 229 teachers.
Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty have said the reduction in force was essential to deal with a budget shortfall of $43.9 million and the ongoing need to "right-size" the school system. They blame the spending pressure in large part on a D.C. Council-approved budget reduction, but Chairman Vincent Gray bristles at the claim. He has noted that the school system has about as much money as it did last year, and that the council's budget cuts dealt largely with summer school.
Particularly confusing is the school system's summertime hiring of 900 new teachers, well above normal. Chancellor Rhee has said the new hires were on board before the spending pressures became clear, but that doesn't explain why the system hired so many or why officials were caught off-guard by seemingly predictable budget problems.
Further, the hiring blitz would make it appear that the school system must have had a tremendous excess of teachers in the first month of school. Yet where were they? At Shaed Elementary in Northeast, the layoffs resulted in the removal of its only third-grade teacher -- sending some of her students to a combined second/third-grade class and the others to a third/fourth-grade class.
At this point, it's safe to say that all the confusion feeds into doubts about the process -- not just among Chancellor Rhee's most vocal critics, but also among the many D.C. residents who are generally sympathetic to the need for major reform. It appears to many that an excess of teachers was hired so the system could get rid of incompetent instructors with seniority without having to follow the procedures laid out in the labor contract. It also seems evident that officials erred by laying off teachers a month into the school year, forcing changes to student schedules and disrupting classroom environments.
Chairman Gray will hold a hearing on the subject on Friday. We would like to think it will produce some clarity, though that may be unlikely given the political tensions between the mayor and the council and the inevitable grandstanding as next year's election approaches. | | | | | Log in to comment on this article |
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