LCPS parents - are you worried about the number of open teaching postions?

[Anonymous]

I've been monitoring the the portal throughout the summer.

https://lcps.tedk12.com/hire/index.aspx

There were 18 new openings posted today and of those 18, 12 are teaching positions. Twenty-one were posted on 8/1. Twenty-three were posted on 7/26. Some teaching positions go as far back as April but other support positions go back to fall 2021.

I'm a bit concerned because I see a Biology teacher is needed at the HS my DD attends, and she'll be taking Bio this fall. She didn't have a science teacher last year and it was a terrible experience. Science is already not one of her strongest subjects so she had to put in a lot of work to teach herself a lot of the topics. We also had to hire a tutor and with all of that, she only managed a B.

[Anonymous]

The worst thing in your daughter’s case is that they have to collapse a section and add those 25ish kids across the other classes so each class size might be a few kids bigger. There is still also 3 weeks left before school and I’ve seen people get hired the day before school starts. But of course, those late hires are either brand new teachers or the people who weren’t picked in earlier hiring rounds so it’s a crapshoot. Some turn out ok, some are terrible but that’s really true for all teachers.

Overall your DD will be fine but the hiring issue will not get better during your kids’ tenure in school. The job has changed. Younger people are not entering the field in numbers. When career educators (the 30+ year vets) leave, there’s nobody in similar experience coming up behind them because doing this as a lifelong career has become so much more difficult. It’s a milestone to make it beyond 5 years now; 10 is a benchmark. So the field is over time becoming less and less experienced -the vets retire and who is left are novices or mid careers. Add in the political nonsense and being hammered by parents over some book that’s on a shelf in your room that’s driving them to fits and too many people are saying why deal with this pressure for this money? It’s unfortunate. I’ve seen so many great colleagues leave the last few years.

-teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been monitoring the the portal throughout the summer.

https://lcps.tedk12.com/hire/index.aspx

There were 18 new openings posted today and of those 18, 12 are teaching positions. Twenty-one were posted on 8/1. Twenty-three were posted on 7/26. Some teaching positions go as far back as April but other support positions go back to fall 2021.

I'm a bit concerned because I see a Biology teacher is needed at the HS my DD attends, and she'll be taking Bio this fall. She didn't have a science teacher last year and it was a terrible experience. Science is already not one of her strongest subjects so she had to put in a lot of work to teach herself a lot of the topics. We also had to hire a tutor and with all of that, she only managed a B.

There is nothing new about this. The explosive growth in this county has always made it hard to fill all the open positions. They've had problems hiring for decades. More than once, my kid's teacher was hired the day school started.One of the worst teachers we encountered was a day-of hire. They didn't even have the infrastructure to get the hires done until recently. I'd meet qualified teachers and specialists who had moved to the county and couldn't get a call back for years but were hired on the spot at a job fair the school system eventually had. At one point they were so desperate for special ed teachers they brought in several teachers from a program in Asia. They've hired special ed staff and then called them in to tell them they'd have to cut their salary because they misunderstood their prior experience. This was after the new hire had worked for months. Despite the administrative craziness which had improved up until covid, they manage to attract a lot of good teachers.

[Anonymous]

Scrolling through the list. Why are there so many openings at Champe?

[Anonymous]

It would be a great time for anyone who is interested in working for the school system to look at the jobs available. Many of the people working for the school system love their jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Scrolling through the list. Why are there so many openings at Champe?

I wonder if a good number moved to Independence when it opened.

[Anonymous]

While it's not new for LCPS to have trouble fully staffing everything, it does seem a little worse than usual in my cluster. And last year was the first time I saw teachers outright leave the profession, rather than transfer to another school (thus leaving more openings).

As a PP said, it's fine; when we can't fill all the positions, the students will be rolled into other classes or sections, enlarging them. But it's definitely not as severe an issue as in other parts of the country. I have a sister who teaches HS in another state and expects classes of 45-60 due to staffing shortages.

[Anonymous]

I just checked my kid's HS (rising freshman at PF). The only relevant positions that would impact her are Social Sciences & Global Studies teacher and English teacher. Only four other positions open besides those two. I don't know if this is normal or not.

[Anonymous]

What they're paying is downright criminal and why they can't staff. My friend is an IA with 20 years experience in special education moving to the area from out of state. They offered her 24k to start. Despite absolutely falling in love with the school she interviewed with, she had to turn the position down once she received the offer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What they're paying is downright criminal and why they can't staff. My friend is an IA with 20 years experience in special education moving to the area from out of state. They offered her 24k to start. Despite absolutely falling in love with the school she interviewed with, she had to turn the position down once she received the offer.

Yeah, TA's across the country everywhere aren't paid well. I think their pay is kind of insulting. I worked with a TA this year in my classroom who truly was amazing. She worked 1:1 with a child with an IEP. I do not know what I would have done without her and most certainly, the child's outcomes improved exponentially simply because she was so good. I'd like to see TA's in HCOL cities start at 35-38K with full health benefits. It doesn't matter if most teachers with a BA start at 50-55K in most cities, we desperately need good TA's. This, to me, is even more serious than a very serious teacher shortage. My sister teaches in a district where it looks like they aren't going to be able to open their headstart PreK program on time along with the rest of the grades because they cannot get enough TA's (required by law) to staff it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What they're paying is downright criminal and why they can't staff. My friend is an IA with 20 years experience in special education moving to the area from out of state. They offered her 24k to start. Despite absolutely falling in love with the school she interviewed with, she had to turn the position down once she received the offer.

Yeah, TA's across the country everywhere aren't paid well. I think their pay is kind of insulting. I worked with a TA this year in my classroom who truly was amazing. She worked 1:1 with a child with an IEP. I do not know what I would have done without her and most certainly, the child's outcomes improved exponentially simply because she was so good. I'd like to see TA's in HCOL cities start at 35-38K with full health benefits. It doesn't matter if most teachers with a BA start at 50-55K in most cities, we desperately need good TA's. This, to me, is even more serious than a very serious teacher shortage. My sister teaches in a district where it looks like they aren't going to be able to open their headstart PreK program on time along with the rest of the grades because they cannot get enough TA's (required by law) to staff it.

In this area a TA should start at like 45,000 with room for growth. Teachers starting pay should be 65,000 and steps/cola should happen yearly.

[Anonymous]

They laid teachers off last year and now don’t have enough? Seriously?! These people don’t know their $&@ from a hole in the wall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They laid teachers off last year and now don’t have enough? Seriously?! These people don’t know their $&@ from a hole in the wall.

When, and why, we’re teachers laid off in LCPS? I don’t remember that happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Scrolling through the list. Why are there so many openings at Champe?

I wonder if a good number moved to Independence when it opened.

That was 3 years ago though. Wouldn’t affect the numbers now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just checked my kid's HS (rising freshman at PF). The only relevant positions that would impact her are Social Sciences & Global Studies teacher and English teacher. Only four other positions open besides those two. I don't know if this is normal or not.

Very normal