Word in Black is a collaboration of 10 of the nation’s leading Black publishers that frames the narrative and fosters solutions for racial inequities in America.
As District public school teachers prepare for the upcoming school year, the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) and D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) are still in the midst of contract negotiations that have gone on for several months.
As WTU President Jacqueline Pogue Lyons explained, DCPS is hard-pressed to place decisions about various aspects of the classroom experience — like class size and length of the school day — in the hands of management, rather than negotiate and codify them in a renewed contract.
“They want to be able to … put any number of kids in our classes,” Lyons told The Informer. “They want to dictate policy around the hours we have in the school day. They’re trying to take away our right to negotiate the length of the school year. They’re trying to do away with mutual consent which could lead to the excessing of effective and highly effective teachers in the school district. Those are things that are regulated in other school districts.”
On the afternoon of Aug. 20, Lyons returned to the bargaining table with more than 20 teachers who left their professional development sessions early to continue contract negotiations with the Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining (OLRCB).
As Lyons recounted, DCPS Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee didn’t show up to the bargaining table, and hadn’t done so since the spring. That situation, she said, has sparked confusion among WTU leadership about whether to engage OLRCB or DCPS. She also noted that that laid the foundation for OLRCB’s chastisement of the WTU collective bargaining team for speaking to DCPS leadership throughout the process.
For Lyons, the recent two-hour meeting proved fruitless because OLRCB chose to focus, not on the terms of WTU’s proposal, but what she called semantics about who’s representing each side.
“DCPS leadership shows up when it wants to,” Lyons said. “Then we have conversations about who we should be talking to instead of the contract. These were disrespectful negotiations. Instead of everyone [OLRCB and DCPS] coming to the bargaining table during official meetings, this union goes between two entities and that causes a lot of confusion.”
During the earlier part of May, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) hinted at some contention with WTU’s collective bargaining team about salary.
Around the time of Bowser’s comments, DCPS filed a complaint with the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB), alleging that WTU violated confidentiality by speaking with the media about contract negotiations. However, PERB would later rule in WTU’s favor. Amid PERB’s deliberation, and in the weeks after, members continue to organize around improvements to work conditions, as outlined in a memorandum of agreement submitted to DCPS last fall.
DCPS didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about Ferebee’s presence at the bargaining table.
Bowser, Ferebee, Local Leaders Highlight Working with DCPS Amid Contract Negotiations
On Monday, Ferebee joined D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn, D.C. Councilmember Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3), Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith, and Delano Hunter, director of D.C. Department of General Services, at Alice Deal Middle School.
That’s where they conducted a pep rally for teachers participating in professional development activities.
Ferebee, Kihn and several other central office personnel cheered on teachers, some of whom wore red in support of WTU’s efforts, as they walked into the auditorium at Deal Middle School. Those teachers filled the seats and spoke among themselves as a student-faculty band played their rendition of Sardines by Junkyard Band. They later listened as Bowser and Diedre Neal, longtime principal of Deal Middle School, addressed them and commended them for their fervor for educating the youth.
Toward the end of the program, Neal recognized, and called up to the podium, three people who were the longest-serving teachers at Deal Middle School: Darcy Hampton (24 years); Frederick Mbayou (24 years); and Elise Lerum (21 years).
Later, in his remarks to teachers, Ferebee touted what he called DCPS’ competitive pay and professional development opportunities. As he encouraged teachers to make an impact on students, he called DCPS’ five-year strategic plan, a portion of which focuses on operational excellence and teamwork, a compass in the DCPS central office’s endeavor to foster ideal working conditions.
“We are here to support you,” Ferebee told teachers at Deal Middle School on Monday. “This is a long journey and you have to take care of self. I want to thank you for choosing D.C. Public Schools. I want you to lean on your village and our central services team. We are also part of the village. This is a village committed to serving you and doing the work.”
Though DCPS central office couldn’t produce the 2024-2025 retention figures by press time, DCPS Chancellor Dr. Lewis D. Ferebee told The Informer that, as of Aug. 19, there were less than 100 vacancies throughout the entire public school system, or fewer than 5% of the entire District public teacher workforce.
He went on to say that substitute teachers stood ready to fill the gap as DCPS works to hire more teachers.
A report compiled by the Office of the State Superintendent for Education showed that, during the 2023-2024 school year, 78% of DCPS teachers returned to their school of employment and remained in the same role. Nearly 10% of them went on to serve the same role at another school while the percentage of teachers who left the D.C. public school system entirely dropped by six percentage points between the 2022-2023 school year and 2023-2024 school year.
Michael Donaldson, a teacher at Deal Middle School and WTU collective bargaining team member, told The Informer that DCPS’ movement, or lack of movement, around contract negotiations threatens any effort to hire and retain effective teachers.
On Monday, Donaldson counted among those who listened to, and later spoke directly with, Bowser during her visit to Deal. His subsequent dealings with OLRCB, he said, compelled him to question her sincerity, and that of Ferebee, to provide the ideal work environment for District public school teachers.
“Their words rang hollow, especially after today,” Donaldson said on Tuesday, a couple hours after leaving the bargaining table.
For Donaldson, Bowser and Ferebee’s physical absence from the negotiation table on Tuesday afternoon further exacerbated a situation that’s grown tenuous over several months. That’s why, with the school year about to start, Donaldson said he remains focused on raising what he called contradictions between their words and the reality of teachers’ current situation.
“Touting the accomplishments at Deal without acknowledging the work that the teachers put in with an expired contract is a little disingenuous,” Donaldson said. “Talking about our pay without acknowledging the high cost of living is a little oxymoronic. On top of that, the things we’re fighting for, to make sure students can safely learn in the District, is something we’ve been trying to address as a union. I don’t think the mayor and chancellor are taking us seriously.”