To the Editor:
I read the opinion piece on teachers by Chris Norris-LeBlanc '13 ("Who needs teachers anyway?" March 8) with dismay. By failing to make distinctions or provide context for his comparison of Rhode Island with Wisconsin and New Jersey, Norris-LeBlanc could put Mayor Angel Taveras and Scott Walker in the same union-busting camp. Providence is in deep economic trouble, and Taveras, known to be supportive of unions, has made public his intention to fire as many highly paid city administrators as he can — he has taken a 10 percent pay cut himself — so as to rehire as many teachers and shut down as few schools as possible.
Taveras did not, as Norris-LeBlanc contends, launch "a full-fledged attack on teachers" or any other government workers, nor is there any evidence for the claim that he is "sitting atop … stacks of money." Superintendent Tom Brady explained in an open letter that dismissing teachers was a decision "of last resort" necessitated by a state law stipulating that teachers must be notified of any change in their status by March 1. If not for that law, Brady claims, "no teacher would have received dismissal notices" when they did. As for protecting teachers, would it have been preferable to hastily cut loose a number of teachers simply on the basis of their standing, whether rationalized by protecting those with seniority or by firing the most highly paid, regardless of the specifics of training and performance? Where's the solidarity in that?
The story of Providence's teacher layoffs is much more complicated than Norris-LeBlanc's ideological, rhetorically charged representation suggests. I support unions and teachers. And there's a world of difference between the actions of Taveras and those of Walker.
Denise Davis
Visiting Instructor in Gender and Sexuality Studies and
Managing Editor, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women
