A Sith Lord Among Us

Is it just me or are Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s latest terminations eerily reminiscent of conniving Senator/Emperor/Sith Lord Palpatine. Is it possible that the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) has fallen under control of a Sith Lord? The Washington Post, along with 22 recently terminated administrators, might have you rushing to convene the Jedi Council. V. Dion Haynes’ June 19 piece, “22 Assistant Principals Are Latest to Be Fired” characterizes Ms. Rhee as a cold-hearted leader constantly usurping power.

In March, after the D.C. Council gave Rhee the authority to reclassify hundreds of employees in the central office, she fired 98 people. Last fall, when Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) sought the reclassification, Rhee said she wanted the same authority to fire ineffective teachers.

Sound familiar? It should, because the manner in which Senator Palpatine was granted emergency powers from the Galactic Senate in that cautionary tale, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, should be fresh in our minds. It was all downhill from there. It is not that her firing of unsatisfactory administrators is inherently bad, but they have the right to know why they were fired. They also deserve more than a week’s notice. One may consider tossing in an official evaluation, as well.

I don’t want to challenge her authoritarian regime, I mean, authority, but I wonder what the goals of these firings are. Are these assistant principals going to be given positions at other schools (a la teachers who have been fired from schools that don’t make AYP)? Like the Battle of Endor, we’re going to have to see how this shakes out. I only hope that the Chancellor has not learned to emit lightening from her fingers…

Isn’t there someone who gets paid to do that?

On Wednesday, a meeting scheduled to last an hour somehow extended itself at least an extra 93 minutes. I know, because I counted every tick of my Flava Flav clock that I wear to staff meetings to keep time. The meeting involved all of the teachers on staff, but it wasn’t a status-of-the-school staff meeting, but rather, a school-vision-and-mission-and-student-body-composition-and-state-mandated-restructuring staff meeting. Needless to say, as a third-month teacher, I don’t have much to add to these conversations, beyond the pragmatic, “Wrap it up, B”:

Obviously the problems of meetings beyond the scope and experience level of the staff are not endemic to the education industry, but I feel that other entities probably have more capital to invest in an outside organization to do the [grunt/boring/tedious/hard] work. I feel that the more efficient way of achieving this “new vision/design” would have been through educational consultants who can come up with a handful of plans based on interviews with senior members of the staff who have the best idea of where the school came from and where it should go. While I understand the importance of the egalitarian method that this school is attepmting to use, all it achieves is a cyclic arguments that devolve into scheduling discussions. This ad hoc methodology that is currently in effect is going to get us to one place: where we are, having the Charter School Board tell us that the school, once again, isn’t making the grade.