Rhee’s open hos­til­i­ty to unions was a hall­mark of her tenure in D.C. and of her sub­se­quent career as an exec­u­tive of the edu­ca­tion reform group Stu­dents­First. That hos­til­i­ty con­tin­ues to dark­en rela­tions between city offi­cials and the teach­ers union, labor advo­cates say.

It’s been five years since self-styled edu­ca­tion reformer Michelle Rhee left her job as head of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Pub­lic Schools under a cloud of bit­ter­ness and con­tro­ver­sy, but she is still throw­ing shade over the Wash­ing­ton city school system.

That was clear ear­li­er this month when some of the teach­ers took to the streets to protest cur­rent schools Chan­cel­lor Kaya Hen­der­son for her years-long stalling on nego­ti­a­tions for a new union con­tract. Hen­der­son, a Rhee pro­tégé who took over when Rhee depart­ed in 2010, won’t come set­tle a new con­tract, says Wash­ing­ton Teach­ers Union Pres­i­dent Liz Davis, and is adding insult to injury by med­dling in the inter­nal affairs of the union.

“[Rhee] is still here, but in the form of Kaya Hen­der­son,” Davis tells In These Times. Rhee’s schemes for re-vamp­ing Wash­ing­ton pub­lic schools have large­ly failed, she says, but Hen­der­son insists on con­tin­u­ing Rhee-like attacks on teach­ers as a way to scape­goat the fail­ure of admin­is­tra­tors to make bet­ter progress. Most recent­ly, Hen­der­son delayed fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions on con­tract talks on the pre­text that an inter­nal Wash­ing­ton Teach­ers Union elec­tion is tak­ing place, which Davis says is a clear­ly improp­er attempt to influ­ence the vote.

“It’s Rheeism with­out Rhee,” remarks Leo Casey, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Albert Shanker Insti­tute, a pro-union edu­ca­tion research group fund­ed by the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers. (The WTU is an affil­i­ate of the AFT.) Evi­dence that Rheeism has actu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed in improv­ing D.C. pub­lic schools is hard to come by, Casey adds, and the city con­tin­ues to rate poor­ly in many nation­al rankings.

One of Rhee’s most vis­i­ble ini­tia­tives is at the heart of the cur­rent inabil­i­ty to reach a new con­tract, accord­ing to Davis. A teacher eval­u­a­tion sys­tem called IMPACT rates teach­ers and pro­vides gen­er­ous finan­cial bonus­es for those teach­ers who make high scores. Low scores, on the oth­er hand, can be the basis for dis­missal. The WTU is fight­ing for changes to the contract’s griev­ance pro­ce­dures, Davis says, so that mem­bers can fight unfair eval­u­a­tions. Nego­ti­a­tions are cur­rent­ly dead­locked on this issue.

Dis­agree­ment over annu­al salary increas­es is the sec­ond road­block to a new con­tract, accord­ing to Davis. Henderson’s most recent offer was a pal­try 1 percent.

Hen­der­son Press Sec­re­tary Michelle Lern­er tells In These Times that school ​“pol­i­cy is not to com­ment on con­tract nego­ti­a­tions.” The old con­tract expired in 2012, but remains in place to cov­er about 3,500 union­ized teach­ers, she says. A medi­a­tor has been brought in for nego­ti­a­tions to assist talks, she says.

Pay for D.C. teach­ers is very good, Lern­er insists, with a start­ing salary of $51,259 a year that is the high­est in the coun­try (though cost of liv­ing in the city is also very high). Fur­ther­more, the IMPACT bonus sys­tem allows vet­er­an teach­ers to earn six-fig­ure incomes. Despite the lack of a new con­tract with across-the-board wage increas­es, many teach­ers have seen ris­ing incomes because of the bonus­es, Lern­er says.

Still, D.C. has a ter­ri­ble time retain­ing teach­ers, Davis says. She esti­mates that there has been about 70 per­cent turnover since 2007, and ​“we are still recruit­ing 300 to 600 new teach­ers every year.” Many teach­ers feel there is a lack of sup­port from senior admin­is­tra­tors, she con­tin­ues, lead­ing to wide dis­sat­is­fac­tion and demor­al­iza­tion that fuels the high turnover rate.

Dri­ving out old­er teach­ers is one of the unspo­ken goals of Rheeism, Shanker Institute’s Casey sug­gests, so union crit­ics might argue that Rhee/​Henderson have suc­ceed­ed in that respect. Like­wise, char­ter schools have explod­ed in D.C. over the last ten years. Near­ly half of all pub­lic school stu­dents in the city are now enrolled in char­ter schools, while more than 40 pub­lic schools have been closed, Davis confirms.

Rela­tions between the union and Hen­der­son seem like­ly to remain fraught with dif­fi­cul­ty, even if a new con­tract can be reached soon, Casey con­cludes. City school admin­is­tra­tors have estab­lished a pat­tern of push­ing char­ter schools, and Hen­der­son has pri­vate­ly com­plained that Davis is less coop­er­a­tive that pre­vi­ous union leaders.

“[Hen­der­son] has dif­fi­cul­ty with Liz because she is inde­pen­dent,” he says.