D.C. Council to hold hearings on teacher firings
By: Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer
October 13, 2009
Two D.C. Council hearings set for later this month will attempt to clear up the confusion and bad feelings stemming from the teacher firings Chancellor Michelle Rhee announced two weeks ago.
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray will host community members on Oct. 16 and Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty on Oct. 29.
Still not clear after two weeks of protest is why more than 900 teachers were hired since last spring even as cuts seemed likely.
In a legal complaint, Washington Teachers Union President George Parker said the 934 new classroom teacher hires were "far in excess of the number of new teachers hired for any school year in the recent past."
He did not include past years' numbers.
Parker also is fighting opposition elements within the union who are using the current crisis as a reason to question his leadership.
"What is most troubling to me is that our WTU president, George Parker, did nothing to stop this DCPS train wreck even though he saw it coming," wrote blogger Candi Peterson. Peterson, who sits on the union board of trustees, helped publicize the student rallies held early last week.
According to Rhee, preliminary school budgets were developed in February and were included in Fenty's fiscal 2010 budget proposal in March. In May, principals examined their budgets and decided which positions they could afford to hire. As part of a union agreement, open hiring can begin in April.
By the end of July, all teachers are required by contract to be placed at a school regardless of an available position for them. For example, a teacher who had been a librarian at a school that closed in a past year would be placed elsewhere, even if a librarian already had been hired.
By August, Rhee said, the school system realized that it could no longer afford to fund those extraneous positions.
The union has been asking why the new hires could not have been let go, instead of the teachers who were waiting on assignments.
According to Rhee, new hires preceded knowledge of the budget decline and they deserved a chance to prove their place with their hiring principal. Left unanswered is why she didn't see cuts on the horizon in the spring.
"It sounds like she overhired," said Councilman Kwame Brown, D-at large, who stood in the crowd at Thursday's teachers union protest. "And it's easy to see why some say it was all about the firing."
