Teachers' Chief Is in the Hot Seat
D.C. Union President Faces Pressure on 3 Sides in Pay Talks

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 1, 2008

When Donnie Simpson's career on Washington radio was taking off in the early 1980s, his contracts were negotiated by a team that included his agent, an attorney, an accountant and his closest friend, a middle school math teacher named George Parker.

For all the high-priced help, Simpson said, "The best advice I always got was from George."

By 1992, when Simpson left WKYS for a six-year deal with WPGC that paid about $1 million annually, it was Parker who represented him at the table before a large contingent of station executives.

"He was outnumbered but never outmanned," Simpson said.

As president of the 4,000-member Washington Teachers' Union, Parker, 58, is now a central figure in a negotiation with far higher stakes. At issue is an offer from D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee that could transform teaching in the District and, perhaps, across the country: a pay scale that would garner many instructors more than $100,000 a year in salary and bonuses linked to student achievement.

Parker must decide, possibly before the end of the week, whether to bring the package to his members for a vote. Otherwise, both sides might declare an impasse, sending at least part of the dispute to mediation.

His problem is that Rhee's largesse comes with an assault on tenure, regarded by teachers as a fundamental protection against unfair dismissal and reviled by critics of public education as a safe harbor for ineffective instructors.

Tenured teachers who selected the "green tier" would have to return to probation for a year, risking termination. Those who didn't risk tenure could choose a "red tier," with lower, but still significant, pay increases and bonuses.

The talks have landed Parker in a three-front war. Rhee is pressuring him to deliver union approval of a plan that she says he signed off on. She has threatened, but never spelled out, a "Plan B" that she says will allow her to impose the changes without awarding huge pay increases.

Older members, many of them black women who have long been the backbone of the city's teacher corps, tell him that they are convinced that Rhee, a 38-year-old Korean American, wants to strip their tenure and purge them from the system. Parker said that Rhee is not targeting black teachers but that "racial fear" has become an issue he must address.

At the same time, newer, younger teachers, who have less use for unions and are more willing to take risks, are clamoring for the green tier.

Detractors

Parker is not exactly serene about his situation but said such challenges come with the job.

"This is pretty much a part of what unionism is," he said at his L'Enfant Plaza office last week. "Not everyone is going to walk to the same beat."

Detractors in the union consider Parker's equanimity weak leadership. They say his willingness to consider Rhee's proposal has divided the membership and brought her closer to what they see as her goal: breaking the union.

"He's been used and continues to be used by Rhee, and it's embarrassing to every single union member," said General Vice President Nathan Saunders, who ran on a reform ticket with Parker in 2005 after the WTU was rocked by a financial scandal that sent President Barbara Bullock to prison as the central figure in the theft of more than $4 million in union funds.

Parker has a bargaining team, but critics say he has conducted the negotiations largely on his own with Rhee and her aides.

Parker said he is searching for common ground to save teaching jobs endangered by declining enrollment and the ascendancy of charter schools. He said he has pushed Rhee on key issues and will not bring her package to a vote unless she moves on several fronts, including a stronger appeals process for teachers who are fired.

But he has also told members that to survive they must accept more accountability for student achievement.

"We have a defining moment in our union," he said. "It's whether we can be flexible enough to embrace changes without buying into what seems to be a national anti-union push right now."

Different Adversaries

The outcome will probably hinge on Parker's relationship with Rhee, who declined to be interviewed. They come to these negotiations with more than a world's worth of differences -- the son of North Carolina tenant farmers with grade school educations and a doctor's daughter from suburban Toledo. Parker turned to teaching as a second career. Rhee has rocketed to the chancellorship from a second-grade classroom in Baltimore in the early 1990s.

Parker brings what former union officer Annette Anderson calls "a very transparent and personable type of leadership style." Rhee, transactional and laserlike in her focus, has little capacity for schmoozing or small talk.

Parker, guarded about his relationship with Rhee, calls it only "very respectful."

Asked whether Rhee is a visionary, Parker paused.

"I think she's young. And she's not had experience in running a large urban school district," he said. "Accordingly, she is going to make mistakes." Most significant among them, Parker said, was sowing fear among teachers.

Until recently, at least, Rhee praised Parker as a change-minded partner. Her tributes fueled accusations by union opponents that he was a fully owned subsidiary of the chancellor.

Privately, union insiders say, Rhee treats Parker as if he were her subordinate. Senior union leaders were appalled several weeks ago after a meeting in Rhee's office in which she upbraided Parker for his failure to secure approval of the pay package. "The entire tenor of the meeting was berating George for not following through," said a union insider who was briefed on the session. The union insiders spoke on the condition of anonymity because they do not want to alienate Parker or Rhee.

Parker said he doesn't remember the incident but added: "I think her frustration becomes more evident than mine in some of our meetings. . . . I meet all the time with people who raise their voices."

Those include voices in his leadership. He has been sued in federal court by Saunders, who alleges that Parker has effectively stripped him of his power. Parker's actions, the suit says, have "a chilling effect on members."

Parker declines to discuss Saunders, except to say that he is pursuing "a personal agenda."

Music to Mathematics

It was music, not math or unionism, that brought Parker to Washington. He sang gospel growing up in tiny Pink Hill, N.C., and went to North Carolina Central University, where he initially majored in music. "But I really wanted to play the kind of stuff I heard on the radio, the Temptations and Stevie Wonder," he said. He switched to math and taught himself to read music and play the piano.

After graduating in 1971, he was drawn to the District's thriving music scene. A DJ introduced him to Van McCoy, the Dunbar High School and Howard University graduate who wrote and produced "The Hustle," one of the disco era's biggest hits. With McCoy's help, Parker formed Special Delivery, a vocal group in the tradition of the Stylistics and the Chi-Lites. Led by falsetto singer Terry Huff, the group reached the top of the R&B charts in 1976 with "I Destroyed Your Love."

Parker worked as a substitute teacher between gigs, and when Special Delivery broke up in the early 1980s, he started full time at Hart Middle School. His interest in civil rights drew him into union politics. From 1992 to 1997, he was a field representative.

Bullock fired Parker after he questioned irregularities in pension contributions to union employees, but he said he had no idea of the scope of the theft on her watch. He returned to teaching and won the union presidency in 2005.

Donnie Simpson said Parker, who has negotiated his past three contracts, reminds him of another union leader he knew, the late Gene Upshaw of the NFL Players Association.

"George has a lot of what Gene had, an ability to flick dirt off of his shoulders. You have to have that," Simpson said. "When you're a union chief, half of them are going to love you, and half are going to want your head."