Since being laid off in early August, Sunny Neater-DuBow has emerged as a poster child for the great Chicago Public Schools purge, in which Ron Huberman and the Board of Education swept more than 1,300 teachers from the system.
He said he’d already cut central office spending to the bone and was now asking teachers to forgo a 4 percent raise that kicks in next month.
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Under the contract, teachers who have been on the job for at least three years have tenure, which means they have due process rights. If they’re dismissed “for cause,” meaning fired for some perceived wrongdoing, they cannot be let go without a hearing. If they’re laid off because enrollment’s falling at their school, or because the school’s in “turnaround” and the entire faculty is being replaced, they keep their salary and benefits for a year and can apply for other openings in the system (or even, in the case of a turnaround, at their old school).
Also under the contract, in the case of mass layoffs due to a budget crisis, the board must follow seniority procedures—which means the last hired are the first fired.
“Dear colleague,” it began. “Please be advised that your position is no longer available effective August 31, 2010 due to Redefinition. As a result, I regret to inform you that you will be laid off and honorably dismissed effective August 31, 2010. Teachers honorably dismissed are not entitled to either the Reassigned Teacher Pool or the Cadre.”
Huberman has argued against tenure protection for underachieving teachers. But Neater-DuBow is an overachiever. She’s sought and won national board certification, one of the most prestigious designations a teacher can achieve. “To get the certification you apply to the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards,” she says. “I had to send in written and video portfolios to document how I went above and beyond the duties of the school day to serve my students. I also had to take a four-hour exam in my area.”
It wasn’t last hired first fired—teachers were kept at her old school who hadn’t been there as long as she had. It wasn’t simple economics—some teachers who didn’t get laid off make more money than she did. And it surely wasn’t merit—as of last year, no other teacher at the school was nationally certified.
