Yesterday, an arbitrator reinstated 75 D.C. Public School teachers who had been fired by former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee in 2008. The big question: how much will bringing back those teachers cost the cash-strapped District?

The Washington Post’s Bill Turque offers an estimate:

[Arbitrator Charles] Feigenbaum ordered the District to make a 60-day good-faith effort to find the fired teachers and offer them reinstatement in an appropriate job. He also ordered that they be made financially whole. Union officials estimate the back-pay award could amount to $7.5 million – a considerable sum for the cash-strapped District.

Obviously, not all of the teachers eligible for reinstatement will come back to work for the school system — we have to believe that at least some of them have managed to secure other employment elsewhere in the two-plus years since their termination. (Plus, it’s not like they left on the best terms.) But given the incentive of back-pay, some will certainly take up the offer. And the city can hardly afford it: during last year’s budget gap negotiations, then-D.C. Council Chair Vince Gray’s approved budget cut $31 million from DCPS spending. With next year’s budget deficit expected to be possibly over three times the size of the one which forced that cut, the District would be hard-pressed to find a financial solution if yesterday’s ruling serves as a precedent. Rhee fired around 1,000 teachers during her tenure.