Get me a rewrite!(Tilting at Windmills) (Letter to the Editor)

• Author: Peters, Charles

Where is the editor? I kept asking that question as I read a Washington Post article headlined "D.C. Schools Could Cut 395 Staff Positions." The first question that seemed not to have been asked of the author was: Is there any effort being made to distinguish between the good teachers and bureaucrats and the bad ones? In other words, will the cut target the fight people?

The article says that the cuts are necessary to pay for a teacher pay raise and "step increases that teachers will be owed" I doubt that readers who are not bureaucrats themselves will know--and the article does not explain--that step increases are also pay increases, supposedly based on merit but in the federal civil service granted almost automatically to 99 percent of those eligible. Are the D.C. step increases also given without regard to merit? And is the other pay raise...