D.C. Public School administrators said Monday they've delivered thousands of idling textbooks to waiting schools, filled most teacher vacancies and gotten some control over millions of personnel documents piled indiscriminately on a file room floor. But in no case is the job done, they acknowledged, as the clock ticks down to the new school year, which starts Monday.

"We have made a lot of progress over the last few months but there is still al lot to do and we are finding new issues and challenges arising every day," Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said during a news conference outside Ferrebee Hope Elementary School in Ward 8.

Twenty-five of the 220 announced teacher vacancies remain, most in bilingual classes, Rhee said. But there are roughly 70 unionized teachers whose skill sets do not fit the job requirements, meaning there could be dozens of teachers on the payroll with little to do come next week.

"The solution is that we are looking to make sure that the excess teachers that we have right now can have placements in schools, even if those are temporary placements, until other vacancies come up that they can fill in a subject-area match," Rhee said.

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The contract between DCPS and the Washington Teachers Union does not allow teacher layoffs before a full assessment of personnel distribution among the schools, a process known as equalization.

The city's 19 principal vacancies have all been filled, Rhee said, most with interim hires. Rhee pledged to launch an "aggressive national recruitment campaign" for permanent school leaders early next year.

According to Rhee, the DCPS central warehouse delivered 42,000 textbooks between July 15 and Aug. 16, out of the 69,000 ordered. Of the 27,000 books awaiting distribution, 6,000 were expected to be shipped Monday.

All told, Rhee said, the warehouse inventory totals 191,100 textbooks and tens of thousands of supplies. Organizing the personnel room in the DCPS central administration is another matter, a "huge priority of the administration" that's been flagged by outside auditors as a "material weakness" in the school system's finances, Mayor Adrian Fenty said.

Some 4.6 million pieces of paper were found there, unfiled. "From an auditing standpoint this is a huge deal in eliminating the material weakness, in being able to show you know who's on your payroll, you know how you're paying them, that you have all the accurate information, etc.," Fenty said.

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com