Cuts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SDTs in secondary schools used to have to teach a few classes so they weren't fully released. That's also because secondary schools have resource teachers, department heads, multiple administrators, etc.
In elementary schools, SDTs need to be full-time just to keep everything running.

Middle schools and high schools seem to have many more administrative staff (which makes sense because they are bigger). Elementary schools definitely need full-time SDTs and Reading Specialists. There are no RTSEs, which means the special ed teachers are inundated with scheduling meetings, paperwork, testing students for disabilities/writing reports, and providing intervention/push-in services. Both the SDT and Reading Specialist support students as well as teachers, and another source of support for modifying curriculum for special ed students, as well as students who require enrichment.

[Anonymous]

ES’s should keep SDT’s because they help in so many ways..

I have never observed SDT’s in middle school or high school take on extra duties. They seem to just make endless PowerPoints. Some SDT’s are better than others, but the worse ones forgot what it’s like to be a teacher and just make more work for us even their job is to make us more effective and efficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NBCT is a complete scam. Teachers I know who have done it said it was a ton of busy work

+1 I’d rather invest in a worthwhile master’s degree than that.

Most teachers just get MEd degrees that are equally worthless.

I think you mean doctorates. There are plenty of master degrees that are worth it.

There are, but not the Masters in Education degrees. The "doctorates" are equally worthless, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NBCT is a complete scam. Teachers I know who have done it said it was a ton of busy work

+1 I’d rather invest in a worthwhile master’s degree than that.

Most teachers just get MEd degrees that are equally worthless.

I think you mean doctorates. There are plenty of master degrees that are worth it.

There are, but not the Masters in Education degrees. The "doctorates" are equally worthless, though.

Ok 🙄

[Anonymous]

What I see is that secondary principals and APs have to leave the building A LOT for MCPS required BS. So by default the SDT is more approachable. The SDT is also the person on ILT most often in classsrooms observing and connected to the day to day lives of teachers. If MCPS wants to shove these stupid online PDOs on us then SDTs are obsolete. But the same could be said for having TOO many secretaries at the secondary level. Why do middle schools need 4 full time secretaries? The same could said of CO. Trim the fat outside the classroom X 1,000. I would even cut consulting teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I see is that secondary principals and APs have to leave the building A LOT for MCPS required BS. So by default the SDT is more approachable. The SDT is also the person on ILT most often in classsrooms observing and connected to the day to day lives of teachers. If MCPS wants to shove these stupid online PDOs on us then SDTs are obsolete. But the same could be said for having TOO many secretaries at the secondary level. Why do middle schools need 4 full time secretaries? The same could said of CO. Trim the fat outside the classroom X 1,000. I would even cut consulting teachers.

Sure! No one needs to be monitoring attendance or keeping records in counseling (they double as registrars), fire the secretaries. And we don't need to ever coach first year teachers or struggling teachers, let them do whatever they want! No testing, paperwork, accountability or training, just send everyone home. Perfect solution genius!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they formally announce any cuts? Or are you talking about transfers?

Apparently someone just made up a post to get some people riled up. There is no record of this anywhere credible.

It’s not made up. But it’s not cuts. They just haven’t finalized school allocations yet so teachers have not yet been notified of what they are teaching. We were told sometime in June we will have an idea of what next year will look like at our school.

so basically it's made up to mislead people

Maybe initially it was a rumor or misconstrued, but now MCPS is proposing cuts to reduce their budget to the County's Council threshold. They need to cut about 6 million. One proposal is to increase class size by one student, and the other proposal is to cut all staff development teachers from full-time to part-time. This was discussed in the May 1st county council work session.

Are teachers incensed by the proposal to cut SDTs to half-time? In our high school, teachers think the SDT is pretty worthless so it seems like a good idea.

I’m an elementary school teacher and in elementary schools they really are needed for many reasons. Not sure what they do in middle and high schools though.

There's not a middle or high school teacher that will say their SDT is valuable. They create extra busy work to help with their promotion up the MCPS ladder. Send them back to the classroom and allow us teachers to use our planning time more efficiently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they formally announce any cuts? Or are you talking about transfers?

Apparently someone just made up a post to get some people riled up. There is no record of this anywhere credible.

It’s not made up. But it’s not cuts. They just haven’t finalized school allocations yet so teachers have not yet been notified of what they are teaching. We were told sometime in June we will have an idea of what next year will look like at our school.

so basically it's made up to mislead people

Maybe initially it was a rumor or misconstrued, but now MCPS is proposing cuts to reduce their budget to the County's Council threshold. They need to cut about 6 million. One proposal is to increase class size by one student, and the other proposal is to cut all staff development teachers from full-time to part-time. This was discussed in the May 1st county council work session.

Are teachers incensed by the proposal to cut SDTs to half-time? In our high school, teachers think the SDT is pretty worthless so it seems like a good idea.

I’m an elementary school teacher and in elementary schools they really are needed for many reasons. Not sure what they do in middle and high schools though.

There's not a middle or high school teacher that will say their SDT is valuable. They create extra busy work to help with their promotion up the MCPS ladder. Send them back to the classroom and allow us teachers to use our planning time more efficiently.

Basically half our planning time belongs to the school contractually, they'll never just let us have it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did they formally announce any cuts? Or are you talking about transfers?

Apparently someone just made up a post to get some people riled up. There is no record of this anywhere credible.

It’s not made up. But it’s not cuts. They just haven’t finalized school allocations yet so teachers have not yet been notified of what they are teaching. We were told sometime in June we will have an idea of what next year will look like at our school.

so basically it's made up to mislead people

Maybe initially it was a rumor or misconstrued, but now MCPS is proposing cuts to reduce their budget to the County's Council threshold. They need to cut about 6 million. One proposal is to increase class size by one student, and the other proposal is to cut all staff development teachers from full-time to part-time. This was discussed in the May 1st county council work session.

Are teachers incensed by the proposal to cut SDTs to half-time? In our high school, teachers think the SDT is pretty worthless so it seems like a good idea.

I’m an elementary school teacher and in elementary schools they really are needed for many reasons. Not sure what they do in middle and high schools though.

There's not a middle or high school teacher that will say their SDT is valuable. They create extra busy work to help with their promotion up the MCPS ladder. Send them back to the classroom and allow us teachers to use our planning time more efficiently.

At a high needs middle school, our SDT was essential to testing and actually supported departments a lot. We were lucky I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SDTs in secondary schools used to have to teach a few classes so they weren't fully released. That's also because secondary schools have resource teachers, department heads, multiple administrators, etc.
In elementary schools, SDTs need to be full-time just to keep everything running.

Middle schools and high schools seem to have many more administrative staff (which makes sense because they are bigger). Elementary schools definitely need full-time SDTs and Reading Specialists. There are no RTSEs, which means the special ed teachers are inundated with scheduling meetings, paperwork, testing students for disabilities/writing reports, and providing intervention/push-in services. Both the SDT and Reading Specialist support students as well as teachers, and another source of support for modifying curriculum for special ed students, as well as students who require enrichment.

Not all middle schools are bigger than elementary schools. Our MS is smaller than our ES

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I see is that secondary principals and APs have to leave the building A LOT for MCPS required BS. So by default the SDT is more approachable. The SDT is also the person on ILT most often in classsrooms observing and connected to the day to day lives of teachers. If MCPS wants to shove these stupid online PDOs on us then SDTs are obsolete. But the same could be said for having TOO many secretaries at the secondary level. Why do middle schools need 4 full time secretaries? The same could said of CO. Trim the fat outside the classroom X 1,000. I would even cut consulting teachers.

Sure! No one needs to be monitoring attendance or keeping records in counseling (they double as registrars), fire the secretaries. And we don't need to ever coach first year teachers or struggling teachers, let them do whatever they want! No testing, paperwork, accountability or training, just send everyone home. Perfect solution genius!

You’re missing the point of my post. MCPS thinks their way of doing things is the only way. Tracking attendance for 600 kids is not a full time job in 2024. Counseling secretaries seem to just send out calendar reminders for paperwork only for the counselors to resend them the week they’re due. Why can’t the counselors send it in the first place? What do admin secretaries do that a front office secretary can’t do? Assign class coverages due to staffing shortages? Why do new teachers need the extra support? Really ends up being more deadlines and brainwashing than instead of actual support. Imagine all those consulting teachers back in the classroom with smaller class sizes and actual planning time! The CS/RT should be the consulting teacher. Redundant to have someone districtwide assigned to help a new teacher only for their admin to continuously push back with “that’s now how we do it here” and then reprimand and retaliate when you try to follow actual MCPS policy.

Seems like MCPS created all the problems these extra positions deal with. Solve the original problems and you eliminate the need for all the fat.

[Anonymous]

Many posters are mentioning how the SDT helps with standardized testing. Other districts have a position designed for this purpose at each school called “test administrator”. Seems like it could even be folded into the counseling secretary positions at some MCPS schools.

[Anonymous]

The attendance secretary in my middle school spends much of her time talking to teachers who visit the main office with personal problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The attendance secretary in my middle school spends much of her time talking to teachers who visit the main office with personal problems.

She's doubling as the school counselor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The attendance secretary in my middle school spends much of her time talking to teachers who visit the main office with personal problems.

Besides check out and check in of students I’m not sure what else the attendance secretary does, but I’d sure like to know. I’d at least hope they would work on getting the attendance statistics in a better place.