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| Wilson Senior High School |
In April, DC Human Capital Chief, Jason Kamras testified before the DC City Council that 500-600 DCPS teachers would be excessed this school year. With the advent of 15 school closings in 2013 and two school reconstitutions at Patterson Elementary and Cardozo Senior High, it comes as no surprise this many teachers are having their positions eliminated.
DCPS held its final job fair for teachers and school personnel on July 29 at Wilson Senior High School in their open space atrium from 3-6 pm. Four hundred teachers RSVP'd for this event according to Brooke Miller, DCPS Manager of Teacher Recruitment and Selection.
The lines for mini interviews with school principals from 33 schools were long. Teachers came with stacks of resumes in hand and many complained of not being able to find a principal interested in hiring them, despite a minimum of five interviews which is required by the school system.
A teacher who requested anonymity shared her disappointment as a certified French teacher as there were a limited number of positions in her area of concentration.
According to the WTU Collective Bargaining Agreement ( CBA) teachers have 60 days to find another position or choose from 3 options of an extra year placement, early retirement or a $25,000 buy out. These options are only available to teachers who have earned permanent status and have an effective or highly effective rating.
Teachers who accepted the bonuses for being highly effective or probationary status teachers will be subject to separation by DCPS if they do not find a position within the 60 day time frame. The clock is ticking on them as we face the re-opening of school for teachers beginning August 19.
Those teachers who fall in the newly created category of Developing, which previously represented an effective rating up until school year 2012-13 are now subject to separation if they are unable to find another position in the allotted two month period. It begs the question, how does a school system alter its evaluation rating system mid stream? Had there been an IMPACT evaluation pilot, these kinks would have been worked out before using teachers as guinea pigs.
© Candi Peterson 2013
6 comments:
It's sad but I don't think the object of Impact was to be a fair and effective evaluation system. Whatever gets rid of the most teachers and gets that turnstile moving...the better! With the reported increase in test scores, the rhee-bots have more justification to keep this same model going.
I'm so glad to see increased test scores. Our teachers work hard & our kids can do it. But why is Nathan sending out messages about it? He's no longer president.
Three VETERAN teachers were terminated at my school. It is time to fire Kayla! DCPS doesn't care about the veteran teachers. I pray every day that Kaya will be exposed. Impact is being used to weed out veteran teachers. Impact is not an evaluation system!
400 current teachers still looking for jobs and DCPS is scheduled to bring on about 300 new TFA "teachers-in-training", thanks in part to a donation by the Waltons. Before long, DCPS will be nothing more than a temp agency for those who want to burnish their resume with a stint in high-poverty schools. SMH
So many teachers and so many jobs but principals are not willing to hire them, I wonder why? What are they waiting for? I just don't understand why DCPS likes to keep the teacher turnstiles rotating at 500 new teachers a year? Or is it more? We need some continuity. We need some certainty. We need stability.
This is awesome!
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