D.C. Council members conceded on Tuesday that they have no authority to rehire 266 teachers who lost their jobs based on what has become a highly suspect budget deficit.
Instead, hiring decisions rest with Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration, according to the council’s lawyers. The assertion thwarted legislation introduced Tuesday by Councilman Harry Thomas Jr., D-Ward 5, to get fired teachers back on the job.
The issue of the fired teachers resurfaced last week when schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said the schools had a $34 million budget surplus resulting from errors by the city’s accounting office. Rhee aimed the surplus at a newly proposed teacher contract filled with raises and pay incentives for good performance. Thomas and others said the teachers should be reinstated.
In light of the council’s weak position, the fired teachers’ hopes now lay with a legal action to be decided this week, brought by the Washington Teachers’ Union on their behalf.
The motion, filed with the D.C. Superior Court late last Thursday, “calls into question the credibility of the evidence relied upon by the District” in November, when a judge approved the firings.
Union lawyers presented news reports as new evidence of Rhee’s purported surplus, stressing the need for “a formal investigation to unearth the truth.”
“The teachers may have been fired under false pretenses if there was money all along,” said union President George Parker.
District Attorney General Peter Nickles responded as Rhee has done throughout the budgetary debacle — by drawing a distinction between the firings in November and the surplus revealed last week.
“The key point from the legal perspective is what were the facts at the time,” Nickles said. “Unless there’s evidence to indicate that the chancellor knew when she made the [firings] that the numbers she was getting were wrong, then her decision was a rational one based on her authority.”
