WTOP NEWS - WTU President Pogue-Lyons expressed disappointment and outrage at DCPS' inability to pay teachers on time. In a WTOP interview, she said, " This union and our teachers want to rebuild the trust, but you only really rebuild trust with consistency,” WTU President Jacqueline Pogue Lyons told WTOP. “This is not working on consistency, by finding out during Teacher Appreciation Week that money you were counting on won’t be coming. They have promised to get partial payment, but teachers were counting on full payment. And so it’s disappointing and upsetting.”
The city, Pogue-Lyons said, also won’t be able to pay bonuses for hard-to-fill positions or stipends for special education teachers until the end of the school year.
“Teachers don’t get to make excuses,” Pogue-Lyons said. “We have to be ready every day, all day to teach our children. And we are, and we should be. So it’s just hard at this point after waiting so long for this contract.”
To learn more, please download the story here.