Teacher Protests--Providence Rhode Island

Facing huge deficits in a small city, the mayor took radical action: He fired every teacher in the system, and will rehire in line with what the city will be able to afford.

Understandably, a lot of folks are upset.

From today's NPR Morning Edition:

About 1,500 people jammed the street in front of City Hall in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday to protest last week's dismissal of the city's entire teaching force.

"I thought the only insanity was in Wisconsin, not in Rhode Island," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told the crowd, which raised signs and banged drums.

Weingarten calls the terminations insane, but city officials say they had no choice: The city is facing an estimated deficit of more than $100 million for the next fiscal year, or roughly 20 percent of the city budget.

Providence's new mayor, Angel Taveras, says he is considering school closures and layoffs for many city workers, but teachers are feeling the pain first, because of a state law that requires districts to notify teachers by March 1 if their jobs are in jeopardy. He says he chose terminations instead of layoffs, because it ensures that teachers the city can't afford will be completely removed from the city payroll.

"With a layoff, for various reasons, you can be responsible for paying teachers who are not teaching in a classroom," he said. "In addition to that, if they go into the substitute pool, you're paying them their full pay and benefits, and that's costing an enormous amount of money. I can't allow the taxpayers to be on the hook for paying teachers who are not teaching."

OS observes, for what it's worth: The union members, and many normal folks, honestly do not believe there is a real problem, that the states and municipalities are not strapped. 2007/2008 is beginning to fade from memory, and Da Stimulus (which ballooned the federal deficit dramatically) helicoptered money to the school systems, and lulled everyone into thinking that there wasn't a real problem.

In frustration, and in an effort to shock everyone out of their sleepy denial, elected officials take actions like this. What they don't calculate is the tendency of this sort of route to poison the well with people whose future high morale is desirable--teachers, police, firefighters, road crews, etc. After the crisis, those that remain will either come to work feeling like they are part of a greater good, or arrive with an even more entrenched us-vs-them chip on the shoulder. They'll either give that little extra bit of effort for the home team, or resentfully go through the motions--doing just enough to avoid termination for cause, and creating chaos daily. OS has seen this in action, and it is a miserable thing to deal with.

There's a lot of the latter attitude already baked into the culture of many states and municipalitles, to be certain. And, given the human condition, it won't ever completely go away.

But it seems that the art of leadership entails the ability to deliver bad news, and make ugly ugly decisions without pouring excess gasoline onto the fires of resentment.

This is going to be an ugly ugly period, 'cuz the money has run out. Doesn't mean we have to draw knives on one another. That only delays the day when we are prosperous enough to not wring our hands over every budget.

This story from Business Insider gives a picture of the cultural quandry: