D.C. Council members on Monday demanded an investigation of schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s recent charges that fired teachers physically assaulted and had sex with students.
“If these accusations are true, then we must act swiftly to ensure children are safe and perpetrators are investigated and brought to justice,” said Council Chairman Vincent Gray. “If they are found to be untrue, then these accusations may devastate the lives of many of the teachers who were laid off in the middle of a school year.”
Gray’s comments were joined by the teachers union and Councilmen Kwame Brown, D-at large, and Harry Thomas Jr. D-Ward 5. They reignite a smoldering debate over the justification for firing 266 teachers in late October.
At the time of the dismissals, Rhee blamed a budget shortfall. Council members who sided with the teachers union believed she should have found the savings elsewhere, like by cutting summer school.
But over the weekend, Rhee was quoted making new, more serious allegations in the business magazine Fast Company. In the interview Rhee said that the firings allowed the system to get rid of teachers who “had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school.”
That charge has prompted Gray and other backers of the fired teachers to issue their own accusations: either Rhee did not disclose to the council last fall that abusive teachers worked in the schools, or she is slandering teachers fired for more innocuous reasons, such as mediocre performance or a simple lack of dollars.
In response to inquiries about the comments, Rhee spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway said her office would have something Tuesday morning.
At council hearings on the firings last fall, Rhee offered general reasons why teachers were fired, but did not go into specifics — for example, how many had used corporal punishment.
On Monday, members of the D.C. Council wanted more answers from Rhee. “Have these people been prosecuted?” Brown asked. Thomas said he was “appalled” and sympathized with teachers “wrongly tarnished.”
The blowup is part of an ongoing struggle between Rhee, who is largely autonomous because the city has no school board, and the council, which has sought to resist some of her decisions, experts said.
“Michelle Rhee’s great virtue is that she’s been willing to say what others have not been willing to say, and to take on fights others are not willing to take on,” said Andy Smarick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “The flip side is that occasionally, she’ll wind up in hot water … the question is how many more of these incidents can she have?”
