Stories broke this morning in the Los Angeles Times and in the Examiner reporting that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee took an active role in investigations of her fiance, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Allow LL to explicate a little more fully what this is and what Rhee is alleged to have done.

Read More "What Was Michelle Rhee’s ‘Damage Control’ for Kevin Johnson?" »

Vincent C. Gray and the remainder of the D.C. Council have just gaveled to order a hearing on the "causes, implementation, and impact" of the D.C. Public School layoffs earlier this month.

LL will be following along on Channel 13 and live blogging the proceedings. (Actually, LL will be livetweeting and pasting those over here at City Desk.)

[Last update 7:05 p.m.]

# LL takeaway 10: LL is not sure if he can do this again tomorrow for the parks contracts hearing. 7 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 9: As every CM said, the tone is awful. Kwame was right; if the political games cont's, reform will crash and burn. 8 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 8: Council did establish that the process did evade its authority and is possibly illegal. That's a win for Gray. 14 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 7: Council did not establish beyond a doubt that this was done to fire bad teachers outside due process. That's a win for Rhee. 16 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 6: Rhee gave good reasons for the hiring of 900+ teachers ahead of the cuts. Her reasons for delaying the cuts were not as good. 18 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 5: Noah Wepman is not very good in hearings. Smart, sure, but Gandhi/Rhee need to keep this guy away from microphones. 21 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 4: Michelle Rhee is very, very good in council hearings. She keeps an even tone and knows when to call CMs on their BS. 22 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 3: Agency CFOs are supposed to be independent of agency execs and report direct to CFO. At DCPS, this seems not to be the case. 23 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 2: Once again, Peter Nickles made the decision that kept council out of advisory role. Add it to the list. 25 minutes ago

# LL takeaway 1: By shifting cuts from summer school to teachers, executive again ignored council directive. Add it to the list. 26 minutes ago

Read More "Liveblog: D.C. Council Grills Michelle Rhee on Teacher Layoffs" »

UPDATE, 6:35 P.M.: DCPS says this is a false alarm. The recruiter, says spokesperson Jennifer Calloway, was incorrect to say that the system "will resume the selection process next week."

Rather, the intent was to keep its recruitment database up to date in order to "address normal resignations and retirements."

The school system, Calloway says, "will absolutely consider" the pool of teachers let go earlier this month. The list is maintained "in case a vacancy arises in a subject area or specialty in which no teacher was RIF'ed....We do not want to be in a position where human resources is forced to scramble in order to make a potentially critical hire."

ORIGINAL POST: On Oct. 2, 229 teachers employed by the D.C. Public Schools were laid off, along with 159 more support staff. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee claimed that budget cuts made by the D.C. Council forced the system to shed the staffers.

And yet, yesterday afternoon, a DCPS recruiter sent a message to candidates for teaching jobs in the system, telling them: "If you are still interested in teaching for DCPS during the 2009-2010 school year, please let me know. We will resume the selection process next week." The e-mail contains a link to a Web page where recruits can indicate their intentions.

Read More "Is DCPS Continuing to Hire Teachers After Firing 229?" »

Forget that picture of Michelle Rhee on the cover of Time magazine with that broom; that was child's play. Click here to see her in her newest incarnation, care of Education Next journal.

The Washington Teacher blog has posted a link to a 17-page memo sent recently from Jesus Aguirre, the D.C Public Schools' director of school operations, to all DCPS principals, laying out Chancellor Michelle Rhee's guidelines for the impending "reduction in force" she says is necessary because of budget constraints (in the real world, "RIF" means layoffs).

So how will the layoffs go down?

Read More "Anatomy of a DCPS Layoff: On a Scale of Zero to 10, What Are Your “Significant Relevant Contributions”?" »

The D.C. Education Compact, founded five years ago to organize outside support for the city's public schools, will close up shop next week.

DCEC executive director Donna Power Stowe announced in an e-mail to its supporters yesterday that the group "will cease operations as an independent organization." In an interview today, Stowe explained the circumstances of the shuttering: "We can't raise enough operating funds," she says. "It's a function of the recession." The group raised $6.4 million in the fiscal year ending in June 2008, according to tax records, and employs four.

The DCEC was established in 2004 by then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams, DCPS Superintendent Clifford Janey, other government types, businesses, foundations, and nonprofits, and it has maintained a blue-chip board over the years, chaired by George Vradenburg, the former AOL exec whose own foundation has taken an interest in education issues.

Read More "D.C. Education Compact to Fold" »

Here are a few words used in yesterday's press release from the D.C. Public School system about the coming teacher layoffs: "equalization," "right-size," "reduction-in-force," "align staffing," and "required separations."

One word not used: "layoffs."

Read More "Some More Handy Layoff Euphemisms for D.C. Public Schools" »

Some folks might be satisfied with the "innocent explanation" presented in this morning's Washington Post editorial on the enrollment of Mayor Adrian Fenty's twin sons at Lafayette Elementary:

Mr. Fenty's neighborhood school, West Elementary, has only one fourth-grade class. Most studies show that twins, particularly if they are of the same gender, should be in separate classes for both learning and social development. That's apparently why Ms. Rhee -- using a process employed for other families in similar circumstances -- assigned the boys to Lafayette, where the existence of four fourth-grade classes made it easy to accommodate them. The school is also in Ward 4, where the Fentys live.

Some folks, on the other hand, might not be satisfied.

Read More "Why the WaPo’s Fenty Schooling ‘Explanation’ Is Not Convincing" »

This morning, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee went on WTOP radio and said more than Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has about the process by which Hizzoner's twin sons ended up enrolled at out-of-boundary Lafayette Elementary.

"I can assure you that no rules were broken," Rhee said. "We have a number of provisions that allow kids to go to out-of-boundary schools and all of those things were followed."

It's not a complete explanation by any means, but it's something. Rhee seems to grasp in some way what Fenty has not: That questions about his kids' schooling concerns the integrity of a process relied upon by many parents in this town, and that they are questions that have implications for his grand project of school reform.

Since Fenty has made it quite clear that he will answer no questions about this issue, LL will not be asking him any further questions about the matter for the time being, barring further developments and the results of several records requests. But here's a rhetorical question for Hizzoner: Why do this?

Read More "The Last Word on Lafayette Elementary. For Now." »

Courtesy of WRC-TV, here is video of LL, WTOP's Mark Segraves, and WRC's Tom Sherwood vainly trying to extract some answers from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on his adherence to the DCPS enrollment process:

This morning, local reporters gathered at a press event at the John A. Wilson Building honoring the World Team Tennis champion Washington Kastles. We, of course, were interested in something besides the fabulous tennis team. That, of course, was to give Mayor Adrian M. Fenty one more opportunity to explain how his twin sons ended up in out-of-boundary Lafayette Elementary School.

Things got pretty darn testy. Listen here:

WTOP's Mark Segraves kicked things off by asking Fenty if every student who wanted to get into Lafayette Elemetary got in.

"I'm not answering any more questions about Lafayette or my kids," he replied.

Read More "Fenty Vexed by School Questions" »

This morning, the Washington Post reported that at least one of Mayor Adrian Fenty's twin sons attended class at Lafayette Elementary School this morning---thus, it seems, making good on a vintage campaign promise from Fenty to have his kids attend D.C. Public Schools.

Yet Fenty, strangely, did not go out of his way to advertise that fact at a press conference early this morning. In fact, Hizzoner was quite terse in addressing questions about his kids, saying he would not discuss the matter out of respect for their "private life." This evening, mayoral spokesperson Mafara Hobson doubled down on her boss' silence, releasing this statement: "This morning Mayor Fenty and his wife, Michelle, officially enrolled their boys in DC Public Schools. Out of respect for the boys' privacy, he has declined to comment further."

But the fact is that his desire for privacy is caught up in a sticky political situation: Lafayette isn't the Fenty family's neighborhood school---that would be the somewhat lower performing West Elementary, at 14th and Farragut Streets NW. And the question is, how did the Fenty kids come to be enrolled at high-achieving Lafayette, across Rock Creek Park?

Read More "Fenty Mum on Kids’ DCPS Schooling" »

D.C.'s last wrestler turned out pretty damn OK.

Clint Billings wrestled for Wilson Senior High School during the 2004-2005 season. He was the only guy on the school wrestling team. And Wilson was the only DCIAA school that had even one wrestler that year.

No DCIAA school, not even Wilson, has fielded a wrestling team since.

Read More "The Last Wrestler" »

Last week, on his way out of the door for a long weekend, LL threw up a post about how D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, faced with threats from the D.C. Council to cut $27 million from her fiscal 2010 budget over an enrollment dispute, had sent letters to her principals telling them that their budgets are set to be cut.

Therein, LL asked a couple of questions: Why cut teachers first? Aren't there central-office savings to be reaped?

This week, some answers came to those questions, from DCPS spokesperson Jennifer Calloway. "DCPS has cut the central office budget to the bare minimum," she writes in a statement, "reducing spending over the past 2 years while significantly increasing funding going directly to schools."

"Central office," by the way, is shorthand for all school-system functionaries who aren't directly serving students in schools---not just those who work at DCPS headquarters at 825 North Capitol Street. And if the central office has indeed been cut to the bone, Rhee will have accomplished quite something.

Read More "DCPS: Central Office Budget Cut ‘to the Bare Minimum’" »

Kurt Schmoke---former Baltimore mayor and now dean of Howard University's law school---has been selected to mediate the monthslong dispute over a new teachers contract, according to a joint statement released this evening by the D.C. Public Schools, the Washington Teachers' Union, and the American Federation of Teachers.

"Our goal is to begin this process immediately so that we can quickly come to an agreement that makes the district and teachers partners in providing our students with the rich, rigorous education they deserve," the short statement reads.

As WaPo's Bill Turque reported last month, both sides are ready to return to the table to hash out an agreement some 17 months in the making. Just who would serve as mediator at that table was a point of contention.

Schmoke, mayor from 1988 to 1999, is of course most famous for suggesting that drugs be legalized---a radical reform that might suggest some sympathy for the radical reforms pushed by Michelle Rhee. Then again, he's spent his career since inside the legal and academic establishments that might favor a more easygoing approach. Should be fun to watch!