Budget approved
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Anonymous
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Bethesda Beat- The budget will add supervisors, instructional staff and coaches to “increase math and literacy support, oversight and progress monitoring for schools, and increased professional development opportunities for staff,” according to MCPS’ release.
Such a waste of funds. More micromanaging and PD does not change the fact that class sizes are too large and kids are not ok. Money should be spent on hiring teachers, school psychologists, and guidance counselors. Instead there will be more central office employees who are so disconnected to reality and these ‘supervisors’ are a total joke. I meet with an LAS bi-weekly and it’s still not clear to me what this person actually does besides sit in meetings all day and check off boxes ensuring our school is on target. Such a waste of money and this will not change a thing. |
Anonymous
| Central office is already too bloated. They really are going to add more staff?! |
Anonymous
| Believe it or not, staff actually like and benefit from professional development opportunities. |
Anonymous
| The upcoming boundary changes that are going to pretty much be county-wide will hopefully help with the class size issue. In listening to the BOE meeting, it seemed clear to me that MCPS is looking to make some major changes to boundaries across the board to better even out class sizes. A county-wide change like this has been a long time coming and it was nice to hear that they're finally going to do something. |
Anonymous
I mostly disagree with this. Most PD that I have had to sit through typically just makes more work for teachers not less (along with taking out prep time). I hate it when they give us homework or independent assignments to complete either by ourselves or with PLCs. It is usually aligned with the school goals for that year but often just feels like checklist items pushed by admin/central office that don’t reflect what staff actually want/need. The anti bias training in particular is always vague and doesn’t provide and any targeted interventions advice or feedback. So, there is no obvious goal or strategy that is useful to staff. |
Anonymous
We would benefit from hands on support, smaller class sizes, and more guidance counselors. Our school runs a food pantry, diaper bank, holiday toy extravaganza, dentists who visit our school, etc. and our issues are worse than ever. We give out school supplies and Chromebooks like free candy yet there is no accountability for maliciously destroying those materials, Chromebooks, library books, or anything really. Families and kids are receiving more and more for free (which I support) yet we are teaching them they have no personal accountability for anything. Want to throw your chromebook across the classroom? Cool, here’s another one! Want to throw away brand new markers, pencils, scissors and library books? Awesome, no problem. I support programs that help families climb out of poverty. However, at least 80% of the kids I directly work with have multiple pairs of $200 shoes, go on awesome vacations multiple times a year, and have parents that drive high end luxury cars. I’m not someone who thinks low income people should struggle or refuse to buy themselves nice things but it is eye opening to see how much money is spent by MCPS and OUR STUDENTS ARE STILL BELOW GRADE LEVEL IN MATH AND READING! Behaviors are out of control. The demands placed on teachers have quadrupled over the past five years and has become unsustainable. We are unable to take personal leave because of the sub shortage and our paras, reading teachers and ELD (former ESOL) teachers are pulled almost everyday to cover classes. Yet the message from McKnight reassures is we are fully staffed. We have more teachers quitting and more required pd than we can handle. Central office is completely out of touch and allocating this amount of money on top of the various other CO positions is a slap in the face. Hire more paras. Pay them more, particularly those that were teachers or have advanced degrees. Hire more therapists to see students. Hire more counselors to oversee student issues, CPS, and deal with the 504 plans (creating, monitoring, updating). Hire more staff to help with behavior deescalation and coregulation. |
Anonymous
I agree that the boundary studies will be important, but overcrowded school buildings and large class sizes are two different issues. The boundary studies will help address the former, but not necessarily the latter. There are overcrowded schools with small class sizes, and under-utilized schools with large class sizes. To get smaller class sizes, they would still need to allocate additional teacher positions (and then of course find enough successful candidates for those jobs). |
Anonymous
How? |
Anonymous
That’s not real professional development. Go contact NEA, and you’ll find many programs potentially available that are actually useful |
Anonymous
This sounds great! I love their focus on math and literacy. |
Anonymous
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Let me guess- the new math and literacy coaches will be in central office? Taking even more resources from the schools?
Does anyone have more information? |
Anonymous
Staff member here. No we don't. 99% of "professional development" is a waste of time and takes us away from actually doing our job. Slash central office and these programs. Let teachers teach. |
Anonymous
The conversation was not about all PD. Just the PD from MCPS that taxpayers fund. |
Anonymous
I think it's great the county values the professional development of teachers. |
Anonymous
Another staff member and totally agree. Shrink central office staff and return them to the classroom for smaller class sizes. |