Coming soon to a school near you: An employee removed from an administrative post returns to a local classroom. The trailer for this movie includes dumbfounded students and angry parents. The way to prevent its opening: temporary suspension of union contracts.

Ward 6 D.C. Council Member Tommy Wells, who won’t take a position on this issue, says I am “hitting on the holy grail of the reform movement in education.”

Let’s all genuflect and begin the quest. Significant change can’t occur unless the city’s leadership rises to the challenge.

Currently, certain District personnel rules and agreements with the Washington Teachers’ Union and the Council of School Officers give union members bumping or retrieval rights. It works like this: Say an administrative position held by a member of the school officers union is eliminated. D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and/or State Superintendent of Education Deborah Gist are obligated to offer a comparable post with comparable pay.

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The employee could claim rights to a previously held position. If that previously held job was as a classroom teacher and the administrator has a valid license, another teacher with less seniority gets bumped. The teacher dislodged by the administrator could push out another teacher. This domino effect could result in a less-than-desirable work force.

The magnitude of the problem is glimpsed in the mayor’s fiscal 2008 budget, which anticipates a “40 percent turnover.” There are 11,000 school employees.

Gist’s consolidation plan for the 400 employees her office will inherit is due Sept. 10. She says she will “honor the union contracts to which employees belong” as she moves to merge operations.

Neither Rhee nor the mayor could be reached directly.

“We’re confident we’ll come to a resolution on this issue so that the contract serves the best interest of the students and school employees,” administration spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said.

Union leaders are simultaneously making nice and waving a “Danger Ahead” placard.

“Right now our membership is concentrating on having schools prepared to receive students,” says Bernard C. Lucas, head of the school officers union.

“To attack all employees is going to create huge problems,” WTU General Vice President Nathan Saunders said, adding that if there are performance issues, then the administration should focus on that — and not resort to a wholesale sweep. “How does abusing workers who have been here for students improve the education of those students?”

How many of you believe that most DCPS employees are there for children, not checks?

Just as I thought: only a few orders for Kool-Aid.

The answer to this latter question should drive the elected leaders to act, temporarily suspending contracts to right-size the bureaucracy and alter the culture. But if past is prologue, the government will flinch, resorting instead to the standard corporate broom: buyouts.

Not to worry: It’s your money — not theirs.