Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Teachers, staff all rehired at Central Falls H.S.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Teachers, staff all rehired at Central Falls H.S.

Teachers, staff all rehired at Central Falls H.S.

by Mike Klonsky

Things have come full-circle in Central Falls, R.I. where 87 teachers, guidance counselors, librarians and other staffers, who were arbitrarily fired without due process, will now return to their jobs without having to reapply. More than 700 people had already applied for the positions.

The firings were pushed at first by an over-zealous State CommissionerDeborah Gist, and a near apoplectic local supt.,Fran Gallo, both bending over backwards [no pun intended] to please Arne Duncan's reform agenda. Duncan, in turn, praised the mass firings as "courageous" and held up mass teacher firings as the new face of school reform as well as an implied threat to any union that wouldn't play ball on RTTT.

But the fired teachers got such overwhelming support from students and fellow teachers around the country,