The Post reports that 75 teachers fired by former Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee may be reinstated, and given $7.5 million in back pay.

The District’s Public Employees Relations Board upheld a February decision by an arbitrator. Apparently, “the dismissals were improper because the teachers, who were in their two-year probationary period, were not told why they were let go. He called it the ‘glaring and fatal flaw’ in Rhee’s action.”

Rhee’s acolytes, no doubt, will say that it is another case of a bureaucratic system more geared to protecting employees than to serving kids. But it’s also another indication that speed—the watchword of the Rhee era, and a key part of her legacy—leads to carelessness, which in turn leads to massive setbacks like this one.

How hard would it have been to just write a letter explaining why the employees were being canned? Aside from being the decent thing to do, it would have been prudent, too.

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery