Four teachers fired in 2008 spoke at the Washington Teachers’ Union K Street headquarters, charging their principals with lying or relying on personal attacks in letters recommending their dismissal to D.C. Public Schools.
They’re among the 75 teachers caught in a war between the District and the union after an arbitrator ruled that DCPS improperly terminated the teachers and ordered DCPS to reinstate them with two years back pay. The school system is appealing the ruling. John Dixon said he had just finished his second year teaching the fourth grade at Oysters-Adam Bilingual School when D.C. Public Schools informed him that he was fired. Just last week, the school system showed him the letter his principal wrote to DCPS to warrant his dismissal.
“As a faculty, we complained early in the year about no textbooks being available,” Dixon said. “One of the things that was said in my letter was there were boxes of textbooks that I wouldn’t open.”
Neither the school system nor the union has made the principals’ recommendations, which all 75 firings were based on, public. The arbitrator said the dismissals were improper because teachers were never told why they were being fired, nor given a chance to fight the allegations that their principals brought forth.
Bianca Clemons said her Orr Elementary students were showing progress, and she had never been written up. “It was always about what I was wearing, or my personal life,” Clemons said.
Kadesha Bonds said she was named “Outstanding First Year Teacher” before her dismissal from McKinley Technology High School.
Another teacher balked at allegations of “poor classroom management” — she had previously taught in DCPS, as well as at American University and the University of D.C.
But school principals gave different accounts of some of the behaviors that led to firings of the 75 teachers. One dismissed teacher played religious gospel music in class and told students to go to “H-E-L-L,” according to principals’ recommendations cited by the arbitrator. Another went missing for weeks, while another repeatedly called in sick on Mondays and Fridays.
Dixon, who fought all summer and eventually got his job back, said his principal was fired too.
“The environment that year, everybody was running on fear,” he said. “I cannot imagine that there weren’t principals out there saying, ‘Well it’s me or the teachers, so I’ve got to put something down.'”
A school system spokeswoman said DCPS wants to allow teachers to answer the charges, then reinstate only teachers found effective.
Union President Nathan Saunders said that even if the principals’ recommendations were true, teachers “still couldn’t be fired.”
“The teachers in the District of Columbia work under a system known as progressive discipline, and in nine out of 10 scenarios the first disciplinary action is not termination,” he said. “There are all kinds of warnings — oral, written, loss of pay, but not termination.”
