A fight for leadership of the Washington Teachers’ Union poses one remaining threat to the recently approved D.C. teachers contract.
At odds are current President George Parker, who was integral in putting together the contract with D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and Nathan Saunders, Parker’s rival for the union presidency and a vehement Rhee opponent.
At issue is the timetable for union leadership elections. According to Saunders, Parker didn’t file his petition to run for re-election by the April 30 deadline. According to Parker, that deadline was null and void in mid-April, when it became clear that the union’s election committee didn’t have the required number of people to run the election.
If Parker can’t run, Saunders has better odds of winning. If Saunders wins, implementation of the teachers contract — with its pay-for-performance program and more flexibility for principals to hire and fire based on performance — likely would be stunted.
Union parliamentarian John Tatum said that there is no way to keep the election schedule on the constitutional timetable, as Saunders is pushing. Instead, he said it should be moved to the fall. The union’s executive committee discussed the schedule at a Wednesday night meeting protested by Saunders and his supporters.
Andrew Rotherham, co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, said Rhee’s reforms would not be lost if Parker fell out of contention, but she would face a tougher battle.
“It’d certainly be more challenging to the extent there’d be an ethos where drama and theater is more important than substantial improvements,” he said.
