Critics count 5 in 4 years; district says 42

By Bill Bush

The Columbus Dispatch

3/12/2008

A national campaign launched yesterday by an advocacy group called the Center for Union Facts needs to do a little more fact-checking, Columbus school district officials said yesterday.

The center said teacher contracts nationally are keeping bad teachers on the job, and said the proof in Columbus City Schools is that only five teachers had been fired in the past four school years. The center is based in Washington, D.C.

But a district spokesman said at least eight times as many had been fired or forced out, and that Ohio law — not the Columbus Education Association contract — is really what makes it time-consuming and expensive to fire a teacher.

“There’s not additional protections afforded through the CEA contract,” district spokesman Jeff Warner said.

By state law, educators can defend their jobs in a hearing similar to a trial, where they can subpoena people and records. A nine-day hearing in 2006 for former Mifflin High School Principal Regina Crenshaw cost at least $37,700, not counting hundreds of hours of district officials’ time.

“When I say ‘union rules,’ I’m using that loosely to also incorporate state laws that are backed by the unions,” said Tim Miller, spokesman for the Center for Union Facts.

He would not say who funds the group, which cited Columbus’ and 22 other teacher unions on its campaign Web site, www.teachersunionexposed.com.

Beyond the five firings cited by the center, an additional 37 Columbus teachers resigned or were fired as a result of the district’s Peer Assistance and Review program, Warner said. The PAR program was developed jointly by district administrators and the Columbus Education Association to weed out bad teachers.

The program matches up new hires and teachers who need improvement with veteran educators. A PAR panel that judges their progress recommended yesterday that seven more teachers be terminated, said Rhonda Johnson, president of the CEA.

At least three other teachers resigned rather than be fired after disciplinary investigations during its four-year study, the Center for Union Facts acknowledged yesterday. The Center knows this because of “settlement letters” in the teachers’ personnel files, Miller said.

In addition to forcing teachers out, the district assigns teachers to home or some administrative job that doesn’t put them in contact with students when they are suspected of wrongdoing that could result in termination, Warner said. Nine teachers are currently in that condition.

Most teachers who are on track to get fired simply resign, so the number of teachers forced from their jobs for poor performance or wrongdoing will be undercounted, Johnson said. Oftentimes, their resignation letters say they are resigning “for personal reasons.”

“Most people resign rather than get fired, you know, how it works anywhere: ‘You can’t fire me, I quit,’  ” Johnson said.

The debate over the numbers does not change Miller’s belief that the union “wraps the district up in red tape.”

“If they want to drag it out, they can and they do it.”

bbush@dispatch.com

State law makes it time-consuming to fire teachers, a district spokesman said.

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