The school year has barely even started, yet D.C. Public Schools is already talking about layoffs.
The reason: additional cuts to the District's fiscal 2010 budget in August, which has forced DCPS to reduce its own budget by about $40 million by the end of October, according to the Washington Post.
However, Mayor Adrian Fenty said Thursday during his weekly segment on NBC4 that half of the $40 million in cuts is due to "the difference between the enrollment and the number of teachers you have to hire."
"As it has been explained to me, what happens every year is the difference between the enrollment and the number of teachers you have to hire creates some gap," Fenty said. "In some school years, the teachers have just been left in the system and are not assigned to any particular classroom. Because of more austere times, those teachers will have to be let go."
That in itself begs for more explanation. Have teachers been hired in past years and then not taught classes? What roles did they perform if they weren't teaching regular classes?
Rhee told the Post she doesn't know just how many teachers would lose their jobs yet. That won't be known until later this month. And it seems that all teachers in the system will be up for review, not just the 900 to 1,000 that were hired over the summer to fill open spots. Seniority will not matter, according to the Post.
"It won't effect the education in the classroom," Fenty said. "Reforms will continue."
