It seems that the Post and the Times aren’t the only ones with early retirement plans in the works. Today at 3 p.m., Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee will announce new Teacher Transition Award Opportunities, meant to provide aging teachers with long service to the district opportunities to retire early with full benefits.

Officials from the Washington Teachers Union held a meeting last week to discuss the expected announcement. According to the Post, George Parker, President of the WTU, predicted that under the offers, the minimum retirement age would be reduced from 55 to about 53 and the minimum years of service would be lowered to 20 from 30, in addition to an incentive bonus for early-retirement. He also cautioned that hundreds of teachers might be expected to take up the offer.

Here’s why this is important: Rhee and Fenty often speak of shifting DCPS from a system focused on adults to one focused on students, and this plan seems to fall under that logic. Any reforms put in place will depend on buy-in from the teachers who will ultimately implement them and while Rhee has significant support in the District, there are those both in and out of the schools who are resistant to her ideas and critical of her approach. The Post story quotes an anonymous DCPS veteran teacher who plans to accept an early-retirement offer and who accuses Rhee of wanting to “buy us out.” She says that D.C. schools “are getting worse and worse every year…What’s required of us gets more and more demanding.” The teacher went on to say she would probably go teach in another district after leaving DCPS.

One can’t help but think that if older teachers who don’t want, or are not willing to, enforce the change in culture end up retiring, so much the better. DCPS certainly isn’t working under the present system, and hasn’t for some decades. As Rhee herself said at an event last Saturday, it requires a different sort of educator, with a different mindset to take on the challenges in the District’s schools. “If you believe these things are too difficult to overcome,” she continued, “you need to go teach in Fairfax.”