Cuts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Attendance secretaries are not getting paid much at all and serve a necessary purpose for a school. They are much more important than a SDT, who make far more money. Cut all the SDTs in high school and middle school. If elementary schools need them, let them have all the SDTs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Attendance secretaries are not getting paid much at all and serve a necessary purpose for a school. They are much more important than a SDT, who make far more money. Cut all the SDTs in high school and middle school. If elementary schools need them, let them have all the SDTs.

+1 the SDTs at high school are particularly useless in their supposed role. In actuality they just do busywork for the principal.

[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!

Attendance in my kid's high school is often inaccurate and flawed. So I agree the role has value, but if it's not currently living up to its intended purpose....

[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.

lol…so true all over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

The “testing administrator” role is already rolled into someone’s job. Sometimes it’s an AP, sometimes it the SDT.

[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.

+1. The non-classroom positions that have been added in the last 20 years should all be subject to zero-base review.

[Anonymous]

I've never taught middle or high school but our elementary SDT is the glue that holds our building together. If they don't know the answer to a question, they know who to contact. If I need support with one of my students, I text them and they're in my room within minutes to help. Our administrators are working hard but the SDT really owns the instructional program.

[Anonymous]

Five or so years ago MCPS eliminated a para position that primarily dealt with test management. Most Elementary SDTs (and at certain schools Reading Specialists) are now managing testing and data analysis. Seeing how this task likely absorbs 75% of an SDTs position, it would prove wise to use cheaper labor for the testing responsibilities. It almost makes better financial sense to pay a para to handle testing requirements and move the SDT to a part time position.

On paper it also makes sense to put APs in charge of testing but most schools are dealing with challenging behaviors that require the attention of the AP. Once you get behaviors under control, APs can dedicate more time to deal with testing administrative tasks.

[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.

I agree that they should be looking at staff who don’t actually teach children. We have two full-time staff in our middle school media center. One of them does nothing but school bulletin boards. They are beautiful, but not beautiful enough to be worth increasing class sizes. We also have a full-time career coach who has never done anything worthwhile. There are also dozens of higher-ups who do nothing but create new worthless initiatives. MCPS should cut these jobs before increasing class sizes or reducing staff development teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've never taught middle or high school but our elementary SDT is the glue that holds our building together. If they don't know the answer to a question, they know who to contact. If I need support with one of my students, I text them and they're in my room within minutes to help. Our administrators are working hard but the SDT really owns the instructional program.

The admin and security do this at the middle school. Sounds like the elementary SDTs were being tasked to do things out of their scope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never taught middle or high school but our elementary SDT is the glue that holds our building together. If they don't know the answer to a question, they know who to contact. If I need support with one of my students, I text them and they're in my room within minutes to help. Our administrators are working hard but the SDT really owns the instructional program.

The admin and security do this at the middle school. Sounds like the elementary SDTs were being tasked to do things out of their scope.

If Admin is constantly running to classroom or hallways to deal with things then that means there is a bunch of Administration work that is getting pushed into SDT’s or not done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never taught middle or high school but our elementary SDT is the glue that holds our building together. If they don't know the answer to a question, they know who to contact. If I need support with one of my students, I text them and they're in my room within minutes to help. Our administrators are working hard but the SDT really owns the instructional program.

The admin and security do this at the middle school. Sounds like the elementary SDTs were being tasked to do things out of their scope.

If Admin is constantly running to classroom or hallways to deal with things then that means there is a bunch of Administration work that is getting pushed into SDT’s or not done.

Admin answers questions

Security deals with students

Not hard

[Anonymous]

I've been in MCPS for 15 years. Only worked at Middle and high schools, but from my experience, Staff Development is not a vital position at all. Also, these are supposed to be teachers who are well-versed in instruction, classroom management, etc. They should be working in a classroom-based position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been in MCPS for 15 years. Only worked at Middle and high schools, but from my experience, Staff Development is not a vital position at all. Also, these are supposed to be teachers who are well-versed in instruction, classroom management, etc. They should be working in a classroom-based position.

They should be transitioned into being the Math Coaches or New teacher trainers, or intervention support. They could also e with CO on curriculum implementation plans and rollout so that is improved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been in MCPS for 15 years. Only worked at Middle and high schools, but from my experience, Staff Development is not a vital position at all. Also, these are supposed to be teachers who are well-versed in instruction, classroom management, etc. They should be working in a classroom-based position.

They should be transitioned into being the Math Coaches or New teacher trainers, or intervention support. They could also e with CO on curriculum implementation plans and rollout so that is improved.

Elem SDT need to stay (we have zero security, RTSE’s, and only 2 admin do when one is out, it is a mess), but it sounds like secondary can go. That said, the LAST thing this county needs is more central office math staff. Why has that department grown so much? The central office math content coaches are the biggest joke and need to be cut immediately. These are all highly trained staff that should be working with students.

They need to look at all staff not working directly with students (in schools and central office) and make some cuts. But not SDT’s in elem schools!