Anyone who has ever lived with a 6-year-old has heard these plaintive words: “It’s not fair!”
Therefore, forgive me if I felt less than sympathetic when I heard about a radio ad, sponsored by unions representing employees of the District of Columbia Public Schools, which included those very words. It seemed, well, juvenile.
“The nerve! It’s not fair,” the ad says. “And it’s not what voters trusted [Mayor Adrian] Fenty to do.”
The unions are protesting Fenty’s plan to give schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee the authority to fire “at will” non-union employees at the district’s bloated and dysfunctional central office. The groups have been putting up a fierce fight, running the ad for nearly a week in advance of tonight’s city council vote.
“Have you heard?” the 60-second spot begins. “Reform of the D.C. public schools has been hijacked. Mayor Fenty and his posse of consultants and contractors have hijacked the reform process.”
A process has been hijacked. The horror.
In fairness to the unions, the employees they represent, as well as the non-union central office workers who would be affected, the central office’s problems go way beyond its 914 employees. As an excellent article in the Washington City Paper points out, even exceptional workers are hamstrung by the Byzantine processes and lack of integrative technology at the nine-story headquarters on 825 North Capitol St. (For all you who thought you had troublesome bureaucracies to deal with, “825’s” story is guaranteed to make you feel better. See: www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34099.)
The D.C. schools have had 10 different leaders in the past 20 years. And long-time employees are understandably worried when yet another manager comes in vowing to clean house. But when some employees refuse to answer their phones, as Rhee testified before council recently, and when one worker is said to have signed in an out at the same time -- presumably to go to another job -- it’s entirely reasonable for Rhee to ask for more authority.
“I don’t think this is necessarily clicking in people’s heads,” Rhee told the City Paper. “If I start firing effective workers, that doesn’t help me. That’s shooting myself in the foot. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not dumb.”
No, actually, the former head of The New Teacher Project seems plenty smart -- and bold, too. Now it’s time for council to give her the tools she needs to do her job.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor