Testimony of Michelle Rhee,
Chancellor
Meeting of the Council of the District of Columbia
October 29, 2009
DCPS Reduction in Force
Good morning, Chairman Gray and honorable members of the DC Council.
Thank you for giving me the chance to testify today regarding the
reduction in force of October 2, 2009. School districts across the country
are challenged to balance their budgets in the current economy without
reducing services. When staff reductions occur as a result, emotions are
bound to run high.
Washington, DC has seen its share of economic pressure. As the Chair
stated after balancing the city budget, Council had a tough decision and
“put all options for filling the budget gap on the table: cutting
spending; reducing staff and their benefits; raising taxes, fees and other
revenue enhancements; as well as using the fund balance.”1
We find ourselves in an unfortunate situation today due to both natural
tensions after a staff reduction, as well as some misconceptions I would
like to clear up today. I understand that some council members feel that
we intended to place blame for the reduction in force at your doorstep.
This was never our intention. While we have been open about where the cuts
came from as a matter of fact, we have acknowledged from the beginning of
this process that Council faced tough decisions and was put in a difficult
position to balance the city budget. We understand this completely and
have reiterated this belief through multiple news venues and individual
conversations and meetings. We aimed only to implement, to the best of our
ability, the resulting reduction that came from the decision to cut the
DCPS budget.
Of course, we needed to implement the Council’s cuts without
sacrificing important programs such as summer school, and I take full
responsibility for my management decisions to do so. I continue to believe
it was the best response to a very difficult situation.
Today I would like to walk through how we came to our decisions and the
process through which we implemented them. We can also address the
misperceptions that have come up along the way.
With much hard work ahead of us, we are still far from being able to
say that all students are getting the education they deserve. Rather than
becoming mired in rumors and misunderstandings, I hope that today will
allow us to move forward on the work we have pledged to do for students
and families in Washington, DC.
I would like to begin by reviewing the timeline of the past few months
as we understand it.
Timeline (Slides 2 -7) [See PowerPoint presentation at http://www.dcpswatch.com/rif/091029b.pdf]
Accommodation of the Reduction
When we learned of the shortfall, DCPS, together with the Office of the
Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), determined options for absorbing the cut.
We first determined to absorb the cut through central office reductions,
and second through school reductions.
Because the yearly equalization process is disruptive as teachers are
moved across the system after the school year begins, we did not want to
disrupt the affected schools twice. In order to minimize the impact on
students, DCPS decided to adjust school level budgets simultaneously with
implementing the annual equalization process.
- Responding to the Reality (Slide 9)
- Schools Received Revised Budget Allocations (Slide 10)
- Principals Were Guided to Meet New Budget Allocations (Slide 11)
- Principals in Affected Schools Were Guided to Implement the RIF
(Slide 12)
- The CLDF Process (Slide 13) • Categories Used to Rate Staff (Slide
14)
- Staff Contributions to Needs of School (Slide 15)
- Timeline Snapshot of RIF Process (Slide 16)
Clearing Up Misunderstandings
• The RIF did not Target Veteran Teachers (Slide 18)
Some have claimed that DCPS targeted veteran teachers in the
reduction in force. Nothing could be further from the truth. Principals
were specifically advised, in writing, of the factors they could not
consider in rating staff members (age and union status were clearly off
the table for consideration). We repeatedly made it clear to principals
that all staff members entered the process on equal footing. In
addition, Human Resources staff reviewed all ratings to ensure that
inappropriate factors were not considered. Finally, school reduction
plans were also based upon average salaries—as opposed to actual
salaries—to ensure that schools had no incentive to target veteran
teachers (who have higher salaries).
The process of identifying positions occurred separately from the
assessment of staff according to school needs. If all other factors were
equal and it was still not clear which staff member would be separated,
creditable service (weighted 5%) was then used to make the final
decision. This gave an advantage to teachers with more years of
creditable service.
Data illustrates that the process did not target any particular
teacher group.
• School Disruptions (Slide 19)
Because of the inevitable loss of jobs that would come with a budget
cut, we understood in August that the process would be disruptive. While
disruptions did occur in some schools, the vast majority of schools were
not significantly affected.
In fact, sixty percent (60%) of schools lost either one staff member
or no staff member. Eighty percent (80%) of schools lost two or few
staff members.
• Police Officers in Schools (Slide 20)
Many were upset to see police officers in schools on the day of the
RIF. I would like to be very clear that this was an unfortunate
coincidence. As you know, the night before the reduction in force
occurred, Hawk 1, the firm providing security to DCPS, went out of
business. To ensure the daily safety measures remained in place for
students and staff, the Metropolitan Police Department stepped in to
provide the same level of school security that would occur on any school
day. Had there been no reduction in force that day, MPD still would have
been in schools. Had Hawk 1 remained in business, there would have been
no officers in schools.
Officers, filling in for school security only, may have been aware of
the RIF in some schools that lost multiple positions. They would not
have been standing in doorways or escorting teachers out. Officers were
not instructed to escort separated teachers from their schools. In all,
we were alerted to five situations, three in which we found that MPD had
responded to related security needs (two at McKinley and one at
Roosevelt).
• Disruptions at McKinley
As you know, the process did not go smoothly at McKinley. The
implementation at that school was not what we intended. To the extent
that people felt devalued or upset regarding the process at McKinley, we
acknowledge and regret the hurt feelings that have occurred.
• Private dollars could not have prevented the reduction in force
(Slides 21 -22)
On October 15th, the Post published a piece claiming that private
donors would have been able to cover the staffing costs left by the $12M
DCPS cut. The story was not correct, and those familiar with fundraising
reiterate that funders prefer funding innovation, not the operating
staffing budget of an organization.
After receiving a number of emails from the FCC and others, the Post
printed a retraction citing the error. Business leaders have contacted
me directly to show their support and to reiterate that they could not
imagine a scenario in which private funders would fill such a budget
gap.
It is important to note that businesses and private interests in
Washington, DC have been extremely generous in their offer of support to
the students of this city, and the gains we have seen over the past two
years belong to them as well.
However, in the past, this generosity has not been maximized to
produce the results that citizens and businesses have wanted to see for
decades. In the system I inherited, there was little strategic
implementation of hundreds of privately supported programs in schools,
and much hard work was directed across the system without being
consistently aligned to district goals or measured for its results.
There was little infrastructure or discipline around ensuring that the
truly heroic efforts of the business community were actually bearing
fruit in student achievement.
Part of my job in reforming the system has been to bring good
management practice to the process of soliciting and accepting
donations, whether of in-kind services or dollars. While this approach
may be different than in the past, it is a far more effective way to
ensure that the enormous good will from the business community is
harnessed into results.
• Use of Stimulus Funds to Stem Job Loss (Slide 23)
Many have asked why we could not have used stimulus funds to avoid
removing staff. Fortunately, stimulus funds did allow us to preserve as
many jobs as possible through state stabilization funds, thanks to the
president’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). $39.3M
state stabilization dollars are funding educator salaries in 2010.
However, Title I stimulus funds, as well as those granted under the
Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), must follow the same federal
guidelines that govern spending of federal funds, including spending
requirements and restrictions in Title I districts. We are the only
district in the country in high risk status with the Department of
Education due to the management of federal funds, and we are not in a
position to disregard the very clear expectations they have set for us
on this topic.
Also, stimulus funds ultimately were counterbalanced in light of the
overall budget. Once the stimulus award was announced, other portions of
the budget were reduced in light of the funds coming in. While we did
stem the flow of job loss through some stimulus funds, for the most part
even with the stimulus, the Council’s adjustment still necessitated
the RIF.
Moving Forward Through Tough Decisions
DCPS is showing more dramatic gains than in the past when compared with
students across the country, and now is the time to stay the course. We
have faced hard decisions before. From the process of creating and
implementing a new discipline policy, to identifying new leadership and
partners for restructuring schools, our response to this summer’s
unexpected cut is just one of the challenges that requires hard decisions
in response to the realities we face.
In that vein, when we have a budget problem now, the best response is
to solve it now. Council has acted under this premise by making the hard
decision to cut the city budget rather than using reserve funds.
Similarly, it would not have been responsible for us to operate in the
hopes that summer school money would simply appear, and I had to make the
difficult choice to lay off staff to balance our budget and move forward
through 2010 responsibly.
With less than 50% of our students proficient in basic skills, and the
vast majority unable to complete college within five years, we must
continue to move forward in the shared mission to produce dramatically
different outcomes for the children of DCPS.
Despite the tensions that have gone back and forth over the past few
months, as adults in the system we need to move forward to create the
positive and productive environment for children that our constituents
expect. I am hopeful that we can renew this shared focus and effort today.
Thank you, and I welcome your questions.
1 Washington Times, August 5, 2009
District of Columbia Public Schools | October 29, 2009 |
