Central Office Support to Schools?

[Anonymous]

One of my neighbors is a teacher at our local elementary school. She was sharing how so many staff members are out due to COVID or having sick children and there are hardly any subs. I'm just curious if anything has been put out by MCPS to address how central office staff might be used to support schools? I would think every member at central office would be deployed to buildings when you have 15 to 18 staff members out at a single school. I know when I was a teacher, we would get central office staff sent out randomly to help with state testing, but we also didn't have the sub issue that exists now.

[Anonymous]

I’m at an elementary that has had very high numbers of staff out for the last 2-3 weeks. We’ve had no additional support from Central Office. I think the administration would have to make a request and I’m not sure how inclined they are to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of my neighbors is a teacher at our local elementary school. She was sharing how so many staff members are out due to COVID or having sick children and there are hardly any subs. I'm just curious if anything has been put out by MCPS to address how central office staff might be used to support schools? I would think every member at central office would be deployed to buildings when you have 15 to 18 staff members out at a single school. I know when I was a teacher, we would get central office staff sent out randomly to help with state testing, but we also didn't have the sub issue that exists now.

Some people from central office have been deployed to schools to serve as subs, yes. "Every" staff member, no.

[Anonymous]

My child's school has been impacted by the lack of subs. I'm also curious as to why certified staff working at central office couldn't be used as a last resort when a school doesn't have available subs or teacher aides?

[Anonymous]

In January, my HS kid had a sub who told them he was from central office. But their school hasn’t had nearly as many teachers out since then, and as far as I know it hasn’t happened again in any of my kid’s classes, at least.

[Anonymous]

January only due to the Covid surge. Since the “thoughts and prayers” or “monitoring the situation”.

The usually lack of support from central office to actual teachers and students.

[Anonymous]

The past couple of weeks have been painful at my elementary school. Unfortunately, we rarely get subs do every teacher is just expected to pick up the slack and help out when you can.

We did have a central staff member a few times in January, but nothing now.

I really think we need permanent substitutes. Title 1 schools are just not getting subs and it is creating daily havoc as we try to fill in all the empty slots.

[Anonymous]

Same at our Title 1 many teachers and paras out and health room busy when I walked by

[Anonymous]

For our school, the COVID rate is much higher than January. You would have thought Central Office would have learned from past mistakes. Nope. This time the situation has been made worse by mask optional till there’s 3 cases in a classroom. By the time there are 3 known cases, many more are sick.

All hands should be helping out at the school level and that includes Central Office staff coming to schools that need substitutes.

[Anonymous]

My elementary school is far more impacted by COVID right now than we were in January. We have about 15 staff out right now and it keeps getting worse. We end up having to split classes up because even our admin are covering and that's still not enough bodies to cover everything.

[Anonymous]

In January, we were hit hard by covid, like many other schools, and we had several people from central office in as subs, most of them former teachers with some kind of connection. We haven't had any since then, but haven't been particularly hit either.

[Anonymous]

Central office has very high Covid numbers.

[Anonymous]

A lot of subs were pulled to help with testing. My high school has been short for two weeks and teachers have been covering during one planning period. The bulk of testing ended last week, so there should be more subs available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of subs were pulled to help with testing. My high school has been short for two weeks and teachers have been covering during one planning period. The bulk of testing ended last week, so there should be more subs available.

Our high school has two days of testing this week. The staff and student COVID rates keep going up. God knows how many students spread COVID at Prom and the after parties.

[Anonymous]

There are 208 schools in MCPS. Sending out Central Office staff to sub is not going to work. 208 times 15 is 3,120. If every school needed 15 subs, sending central office staff out to sub would barely make a dent.