In the too-strange-to-be-true category, DISD is advertising on its website for 60 new teachers — right after laying off 350 teachers, according to the DMN. Talk about a PR nightmare, huh?
Now, there could be a logical reason for this; DISD's take on it is that more teachers voluntarily left the district than expected, and that deadline was later than the RIF deadline, so in effect, too many teachers were laid off. All fine and good, so far.
But the question being asked is why the laid-off teachers can't be given first shot at the new jobs. Of course, it's not too late for that to happen, and DISD says that terminated employees will be given priority for the jobs, when qualified. So it could very well be much ado about nothing, assuming that the laid-off teachers are given first crack at the posted jobs. And presumably, although I'm no labor lawyer, I would assume that DISD is legally required to post available jobs and evaluate all-comers as opposed to limiting applicants to a small pool.
It's just that the whole thing sounds bad, and the last thing DISD needs right now is more bad PR. Yet there it is — another argument for considering whether DISD is simply too big to be managed as-is.
Contributing to this problem is the fact that the DISD used a snapshot of the District's enrollment on September 11 to set the attendance benchmark for the formula that was used to determine student-teacher ratios, thus setting how many teachers would have to be let go. By the time they got around to the RIF some 5 weeks later, those numbers were no longer accurate. That a significant number of kids show up to enroll well after the start of school could have been anticipated, since that happens every year. This is especially true when you consider the lengths that DISD is currently going to in their effort to get drop-outs back in school. It appears, however, that this was not anticipated.
It's not too big to manage if you have quality management. There's your trouble.
Posted by: Norman Alston | Oct 27, 2008 at 07:20 AM