Providence Giving All Its Teachers Pink Slips

All 1,926 teachers in the Providence Public School District are about to get termination notices. Tomorrow the school board will vote on a resolution to dismiss every teacher on the last day of school, Superintendent Tom Brady announced in a staff email today, according to the Providence Journal. Not all of the teachers will actually get the boot, but Brady says he needs “maximum flexibility” to address the district’s budget crisis.

Rhode Island law requires that teachers be notified of potential changes in their status by March 1, so Brady is blanketing the district with pink slips now to keep the board’s options open. But that hardly reassures the Providence Teachers Union. “This is beyond insane,” says its president. “Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7, 1941.” That, for the non-history teachers in the audience, was the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. (More Providence stories.)