Rhee Seeks Authority to Terminate Employees

Rhee is gearing up for her first big fight -- a much needed one!

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is preparing plans to fire up to several hundred employees over the coming year, part of a major restructuring of the school system's central office aimed at streamlining  operations, District government sources said.

As the initial piece of her strategy, Rhee has begun drafting legislation  that would ask the D.C. Council to suspend personnel laws so that the chancellor  would have the authority to terminate employees without having to reassign them to other jobs. Rhee also has been meeting with council members to lay the  groundwork for their political support, members said.
 
The chancellor's actions are aimed at taking on the intractable central  bureaucracy of the 50,000-student system, blamed for scuttling generations of  reforms, said council members who have met with Rhee. During her informal  chats with parents, community meetings and a two-day teacher training event  last week, Rhee has vowed to create a central administration that is more  receptive and responsive when dealing with parents, teachers and  principals.
 
In past years, for example, the central office has allowed thousands of  school facility work orders to languish, failed to deliver paychecks to teachers on time and had trouble supplying principals with supplies and  equipment.

This is much needed, as this case study from The Center for Education Reform newsletter highlights:

TO TEACH OR NOT TO  TEACH?

          Public officials making money for not working - how's that for a  lesson for our elected officials, parents, and education professionals, not to  mention our children? That is the story out of Washington, D.C. this week.    
            The  Examiner reports that 68 teachers and staff will be paid nearly $5.4 million dollars due to a flawed teacher contract with seniority provisions that is out of the hands of the new Chancellor - for now. The district's
             union contract calls for younger teachers to be laid off before those with accrued years of service. But those younger teachers are valuable, according to Rhee,  so rather than lay them off, Rhee will keep the senior s
             staffers on the rolls, but staff positions with the best person for the job, regardless of seniority.  Of course, this is just one of the bureaucratic nightmares that the new  leadership inherited.

      In August we brought you information about the  power wielded by the textbook man. And in June, the Washington Post wrote a  three-part series about reform and the political struggles that accompany that effort.   
            This is not a D.C.-specific problem, it is a BLOB problem, and urban policymakers should take lessons learned from this situation to their own  cities - identifying where union protection clauses cost money and have  
            negative impact on children.

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Rhee Seeks Authority to Terminate Employees
Planned Legislation Is Aimed at Reorganizing the D.C. School System's Central Command
By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 29, 2007; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801615.html?sub=AR

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is preparing plans to fire up to several hundred employees over the coming year, part of a major restructuring of the school system's central office aimed at streamlining operations, District government sources said.