Is this the beginning of the end for Michelle Rhee?

Michelle Rhee hasn't exactly been playing well with others lately. Last month, she laid off 388 school employees, including teachers, a decision that continued to make her an enemy to teachers' unions and much of the D.C. City Council.

To anyone who is even remotely familiar with the politics of the District of Columbia, this is nothing new. In fact, Rhee's current budget-driven layoffs, conflict with the city council, and vitriol-filled public meetings are so familiar that the Washington Post's Bill Turque outlines the history of D.C. public schools reform efforts and almost offers Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty a gameplan ("Education reform long troubled in District").

Fenty has had his share of troubles with the council as of late, and it's very possible that next year's mayoral election will serve as a referendum on his efforts to pilot D.C. through the last few years of development (and, to an extent, gentrification) and recession and could serve as a referendum on Rhee herself. The two are not exactly intertwined, but his recent troubles with the council do not bode well for his chancellor, whom Turque wonders might be"destined to join Franklin L. Smith, Lt. Gen. Julius Becton, Arlene Ackerman, Paul L. Vance and Clifford B. Janey, the school leaders who preceded her in the past two decades."

In short, Rhee has always had her work cut out for her and her well-publicized "no bull" approach has not made her many friends, except for maybe the press who teeter between cheering for her and milking this story, which has gotten national attention. Most of the profile pieces about her (including one in a recent issue of the Washington Post Magazine) have driven home the point that she has a very hard personality and ever since she took over the job of reforming D.C. schools, didn't care what enemies she made and was spoiling for a fight.

Well, she got one.

Now Rhee is reaching her tipping point. Massive layoffs coupled with admissions that she didn't seem to consider other options before enacting the cuts and an angry teachers' union may cause Fenty to distance himself in the course of running for reelection. Of course, this remains to be seen, especially if Rhee's layoff gamble works and D.C.'s public schools begin to show measurable improvement before the end of the school year. However, with the council now beginning to pull its weight and the course of history stacked against her, it seems more likely that within a couple of years, Rhee may wind up being a cautionary tale while the schools of the District of Columbia continue to spin their wheels under a new, "safer" chancellor.

image by Iris Harris, U.S. Department of Commerce, found on Wikimedia Commons