News Briefs

D.C. axes teachers midsemester

Oct 29, 2009 12:09 PM

The public schools system in the District of Columbia laid off more than 220 teachers from its 3,800-member teaching force in October, the deepest cut for the school system since 2003. In all, 388 school employees — few of them central office personnel — received separation notices. At one high school, a scuffle between police and some 200 students protesting the layoffs led to two arrests.

School officials blame a $43.9 million gap in the system’s 2010 budget and what Chancellor Michelle Rhee called the need to “right-size” a school system that has seen steep enrollment declines during the past decade.
The heaviest cutbacks were in high schools, some of which have not reached their projected enrollments.
The teachers will be dropped from the payroll on Nov. 2.

Washington Teachers’ Union President George Parker blasted the move, saying the layoff notices went predominantly to senior teachers over age 50. Seniority rights do not apply to layoffs in the district’s schools.

Parker also said the layoffs interfered with contract negotiations, which have dragged on for more than two years, largely over these same job-security issues.

Parker called Rhee’s move “reform by pink slip, devastating to the instructional programs at D.C. schools and grossly unfair to the teachers and their students.”

One laid-off first-year teacher writing in the Washington Post recounted the havoc that the firings wreaked on his life and on his 3rd-grade students, “just when students were getting acclimated to their new environments,” he said.

“I was the only 3rd-grade teacher at my school,” new teacher Jodie Gittleson wrote. “My principal informed me that my students would be mixed in with fourth- and second-graders. Yes, these are tough economic times, but does that justify providing a poor educational experience for these children? Simply reassigning them in this way will greatly degrade the educational experience for my 3rd-graders, not to mention those in the classes into which they must be integrated. While I am obviously upset about losing my job, many more individuals are going to suffer from this shortsighted decision.”

Washington Post,
Oct. 3, 8, 11