UPDATED: State Senator Blasts Gist on Teacher Firings

UPDATED: State Senator Blasts Gist on Teacher Firings

A state senator is claiming that Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s statement that the Providence teacher firings were legal is misleading.

GoLocalProv first reported last Friday that Gist determined the terminations were legal, in response to a letter from state Senator James Sheehan, D-Narragansett, North Kingstown.

Today, Sheehan described Gist’s response as “misleading” in a news release issued by the Statehouse press office.

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In her letter, Gist had pointed to a 1982 case, Russell Arnold & Michael Clifford v. Burrillville School Committee, which concluded that a financial crisis constituted a “good and just cause” for dismissing tenured teachers.

"However, Commissioner Gist failed to mention RI Department of Education's own criteria for determining if a bona fide financial exigency actually exists," Sheehan said.

He pointed to a 1991 court case, Richard Phelan v. Burrillville School Committee, which said that to determine "whether a bona fide financial exigency exists in a particular case, we will consider such factors as the money-saving measures other than tenured-teacher dismissals implemented by the school committee and the proportion that the amount saved as a result of the school committee's money-saving measures, including the amount saved from the dismissal of tenured teachers, bears to the budgetary downfall."

"Firing all Providence teachers does not meet the latter standard of proportionality," Sheehan said. He said that terminating 400 teachers "would likely have been sufficient to cover the expected school shortfall."

UPDATE: Gist Responds

In response to a request for comment, Education Commissioner Deborah Gist yesterday didn't not specifically address the criticisms outlined by Sheehan. Instead she stressed that her letter was not an official ruling on the Providence case.

"In response to Senator Sheehan's inquiry, I informed the Senator that 'financial exigency' could be just cause for terminating the contracts of tenured teachers," Gist said. "I did not make any findings nor did I issue any ruling regarding the legality of teacher terminations in Providence."