D.C. Teacher Honored in February, Sacked in October

Certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBCT) is a signal achievement in the education world. It means that a teacher has completed between one and three years of rigorous study and self-appraisal that includes a portfolio of student work, classroom videotapes and tests of content knowledge.

In February, Marie Fonrose, then a counselor at Anacostia, was one of the 20 newly certified DCPS teachers honored by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten at a reception. Nearly 74,000 teachers nationwide have won certification, but they are rare in DCPS, which has just 39.

On Oct. 2, she was one of the 266 teachers and support staff laid off to help close what Rhee has called a $43.9 million budget gap. Like many other educators shown the door, she said that Rhee's formula for determining who should go--involving broad categories such as "needs of the school," was no formula at all but a license for administrators to fire at will.

"In gathering data for this RIF [reduction in force], one will find that many principals use their own criteria in deciding who to let go. Many of them did not even take the time to get to know what skills and talents to retain," Fonrose said in an e-mail.

Fonrose didn't stay at Anacostia when it was was taken over by Friendship Public Charter Schools at the end of the 2008-09 school year. Friendship wanted to make its own decisions about teachers, so Fonrose was "excessed" into a pool of instructors assigned elsewhere by the school system's human resources department. She landed at another high school operated by an outside organization, Friends of Bedford.

"Many of us were set up during the placement process by HR this past summer because the partnerships (Friends of Bedford and Friendship) wanted the rights to hire their own personnel for the school year," Fonrose said. "Even with a doctorate and a national board certification, I spent the first six weeks of the school year explaining my worth to the partners. Each time I attended a meeting, my peers had to hear that I was the only one who was not "chosen" to be here. I made a joke of the matter by saying sometimes the "sent" ones are more skilled than the "chosen" ones."

The District placed her at Dunbar as the school's pre-engineering counselor, but when administrators tried to change her title to "helper," she felt the writing on the wall was clear.

"Later on, I learned that helper really meant training their new senior counselor before they get rid of me," she said. "That's called being a team player, anything else is unacceptable."

DCPS has been hit by at least one wrongful termination lawsuit growing out of layoffs at Dunbar. Last week, the D.C. Wire wrote about the case of second year English teacher Michael T. Green. Friends of Bedford CEO George Leonard did not return a phone message Monday.

Fonrose said one of her students called her about the RIF, unaware that she had been included. "She said 'I guess I have to make sure I am as good as you so this does not happen to me' when I graduate from college," Fonrose said.

"I said, 'Well, I was riffed.' Her answer was 'no way.' She is now thinking about changing her major."