Your emails at work!

Just up on the Telegram and Gazette website:

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — School officials today moved to terminate the contract of the former school department office manager who landed a $75,000-a-year job as an elementary school special education teacher — even though she has no teaching experience, has not passed the state teacher licensing test and does not have required special education training.

Donna C. Byrnes, 58, moved from the superintendent’s office to the classroom after former School Superintendent James A. Caradonio stepped down last September.
Ms. Byrnes will be allowed to stay on in the classroom in a lower-paying substitute teacher position until the job can be posted in May, said Mayor Konstantina B. Lukes, who is chairman of the School Committee.

Mrs. Lukes and several School Committee members met with interim Superintendent Deirdre Loughlin this morning amid a growing outcry ignited by a Sunday Telegram & Gazette story that detailed Ms. Byrnes’ salary and lack of qualifications.

Mrs. Lukes deferred to the interim superintendent on the timing of the contract termination and Mrs. Byrnes’ demotion to substitute teacher. Ms. Loughlin wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Printed here in its entirety as it will disappear overnight!
But the comments are right here again: this is indicative of a larger problem. This hasn't solved it (most notably, for the children in that class, for whom nothing has changed at all!). We have an endemic problem in Worcester of hiring practices being guided by who knows whom. It does our children no good at all, and it needs to end.