Extreme myopia (beyond Providence) + process questions (in Providence)

Written by a teacher-librarian and posted in part on Washington Post Answer Sheet blog, this first hand description of hearings for teachers that the Los Angeles Unified School District is attempting to lay off reveals a shortsighted and and heartbreaking process. It's worth a read, as is the original longer post. For more background, here and here are two opinion pieces (against) on issue of RIF-ing all LAUSD teacher-librarians (am assuming that second one, published today, is written by the same Ms. Murphy as the author of the blog piece referred to a couple of lines back. Whether there are one or two Ms. Murphys documenting the process of what's happening in LAUSD and speaking out, kudos to you.

Teachers here in Providence will soon be facing the same process. Well, not exactly the same. The LAUSD hearings, however absurdly the district may be handling them, are being conducted on a teacher-by-teacher basis. Teachers in Providence who wish to seek due process to address their firings will be doing so in group hearings, the ProJo reports. I will leave it to you to opine on the legality or feasibility of conducting group hearings for such a purpose.

Which teachers will choose to do so will become evident soon, I assume. According to this May 3 Emergency Motion to Expedite published on the PPSD website, "The individualized statements of cause contemplated by the PSB Plan have to be provided to the teachers no later than May 17, 2011 under the Tenure Act." That was yesterday.

I surmise that these notices went out to "Category 3" teachers who are being dismissed for cause (see this useful post from The Quick and the Ed blog for a succinct explanation of three hiring/firing categories into which PPSD has sorted teachers). Or did it go to all teachers whose dismissal notices haven't yet been rescinded? This would including those going to next week's "match event" designed to put still-fired teachers eligible for hire into open PPSD teaching jobs.

Seriously, if anyone has insight into the process, please to share. I've figured out about as much as I can with Google as my guide and need to get back to the paycheck-generating work.