Cuts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a follow-up to the quoted demographic statement it's rather odd that you would assume that teachers are all white. You might want to double-check your assumptions at the door.

And haven't you noticed the white teachers complain about pay and cost-of-living much more than the teachers of color?

Oooooo, way to deflect!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a follow-up to the quoted demographic statement it's rather odd that you would assume that teachers are all white. You might want to double-check your assumptions at the door.

And haven't you noticed the white teachers complain about pay and cost-of-living much more than the teachers of color?

Oooooo, way to deflect!

Not a deflection. I get it, though. It has got to be tough when your "school" requirements eliminate about 75% of the county.

Sorry you can't buy a house in Bethesda or Chevy Chase. But luckily Frederick County is just as white! I mean, the schools are good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a follow-up to the quoted demographic statement it's rather odd that you would assume that teachers are all white. You might want to double-check your assumptions at the door.

And haven't you noticed the white teachers complain about pay and cost-of-living much more than the teachers of color?

Oooooo, way to deflect!

Not a deflection. I get it, though. It has got to be tough when your "school" requirements eliminate about 75% of the county.

Sorry you can't buy a house in Bethesda or Chevy Chase. But luckily Frederick County is just as white! I mean, the schools are good.

Totally flattened by your latest contribution to the universe.

[Anonymous]

69% of MCPS teachers are White. Supporting staff are more diverse.
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYjc3MGQ2N2EtZThjMS00NjFmLWE3ZjEtMjJjZTMwZjUwMzM4IiwidCI6ImRkZjc1NWU5LWJjZDYtNGE1ZS1hNDcyLTdjMzc4YTc4YzZjNyIsImMiOjF9

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a follow-up to the quoted demographic statement it's rather odd that you would assume that teachers are all white. You might want to double-check your assumptions at the door.

And haven't you noticed the white teachers complain about pay and cost-of-living much more than the teachers of color?

Oooooo, way to deflect!

Not a deflection. I get it, though. It has got to be tough when your "school" requirements eliminate about 75% of the county.

Sorry you can't buy a house in Bethesda or Chevy Chase. But luckily Frederick County is just as white! I mean, the schools are good.

Are you saying teachers should buy a house in Frederick and commute to Montgomery County? Why would you want that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I very much doubt that pay raises translated to cuts. Some many other variables played a bigger role. "The operational needs of MCPS have become “very expensive” due to the loss of federal COVID-19 relief funds, implementing the state-mandated Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform bill and the “rising inflationary costs” of materials and services."

Some of this should have been forecasted and planned-for, while others, like inflationary costs (along with market conditions) may have been completely out of their hands. No one can control the insane costs for groceries for example.

MCPS needs to stop throwing money at new untested programs. Why do they constantly keep reinventing the wheel. Math instruction worked pretty well 30 years ago. They completely changed how math is taught and frankly the average kid is worse at math now than 30 years ago. Also, the push towards online everything has been a bad idea. Many kids are constantly on their phones or screens when they are out of school. School should be a break from tech as much as possible. Finally special ed and ESOL are a huge drain on the MCPS budget and becoming more expensive every year. Legal bills have also skyrocketed in the last few years. In my opinion, teacher salaries and class sizes should be the last thing cut as they directly impact students. If we want to attract good teachers we need to pay high salaries as there is a lot of competition in our region for good teachers. DCPS already pays at least 10k more per each step to their teachers. Teachers can easily move to teach in DC or VA or top private schools or they might leave the profession altogether

Math curriculum was terrible 30 years ago, unless you just base it on the ability of the students to do things that they will ultimately just do on a calculator.

Maybe you should switch to DC or VA.

30 years ago they had textbooks, homework, teachers reviewed homework and actually taught. Test scores were higher. The new way does not work.

Most kids are not understanding math these days. They are learning it superficially with no depth of understanding. I teach chemistry and many 10th graders are completely dependent on their calculators even for simple math like 4x12. They never memorised multiplication tables and now are handicapped by not understanding even the most fundamental building blocks of math.
Some kids do great but more than half the class has no idea how to manipulate simple equations even though they have passed algebra 1 already. They can do basic plug and chug questions but they are stumped if you ask them to think about mathematical relationships. MCPS is doing a terrible job with math these days (except for kids who are naturally good at math and pick it up easily)

This is true. Maybe some of you don’t see it but there is a huge divide in math skills between high income and low income students. We need to go back to the basics.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a follow-up to the quoted demographic statement it's rather odd that you would assume that teachers are all white. You might want to double-check your assumptions at the door.[/quote]

And haven't you noticed the white teachers complain about pay and cost-of-living much more than the teachers of color? [/quote]

Oooooo, way to deflect! [/quote]

Not a deflection. I get it, though. It has got to be tough when your "school" requirements eliminate about 75% of the county.

Sorry you can't buy a house in Bethesda or Chevy Chase. But luckily Frederick County is just as white! I mean, the schools are good. [/quote]

Are you saying teachers should buy a house in Frederick and commute to Montgomery County? Why would you want that? [/quote]

The question is why are teachers doing that when they could get similarly-priced homes east county in MoCo?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a follow-up to the quoted demographic statement it's rather odd that you would assume that teachers are all white. You might want to double-check your assumptions at the door.[/quote]

And haven't you noticed the white teachers complain about pay and cost-of-living much more than the teachers of color? [/quote]

Oooooo, way to deflect! [/quote]

Not a deflection. I get it, though. It has got to be tough when your "school" requirements eliminate about 75% of the county.

Sorry you can't buy a house in Bethesda or Chevy Chase. But luckily Frederick County is just as white! I mean, the schools are good. [/quote]

Are you saying teachers should buy a house in Frederick and commute to Montgomery County? Why would you want that? [/quote]

The question is why are teachers doing that when they could get similarly-priced homes east county in MoCo?[/quote]

DP here.
I disagree that eastern Montgomery County is similarly priced to Frederick. East county is expensive for what you get, inconvenient and lacks amenities.

[Anonymous]

DP here.
I disagree that eastern Montgomery County is similarly priced to Frederick. East county is expensive for what you get, inconvenient and lacks amenities.

It sounds like you don't know east county *or* Frederick county very well.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]The question is why are teachers doing that when they could get similarly-priced homes east county in MoCo?[/quote]
Houses and yards are bigger in Frederick Co.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The question is why are teachers doing that when they could get similarly-priced homes east county in MoCo?

Houses and yards are bigger in Frederick Co.

Not by much if you want to be near amenities or in a convenient location.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused as to why MCEA is asking for $10 million to hire teachers when we ultimately ended up with no cuts and furloughs?

https://mocoshow.com/2024/06/20/mcea-calls-on-upcoming-mcps-superintendent-to-join-in-calling-for-10-million-special-appropriation-from-county-council/

Can someone from MCEA explain?

Because they're not satisfied just that there happened to be enough vacancies that no teachers were fired, they also care about the negative impacts of the class size increases (and you should too)? There were lots of cuts and it's pretty terrible.

They could renegotiate their contract and agree to cut their pay increase from fy24 to fy25 by 20%. That would save more than $10M.

Yeah, since the cost of living around here is going down, not up.

I wasn't suggesting they would take a pure cut compared to last year. Rather, that they could accept a slightly smaller increase.

Or you can volunteer for a pay cut and donate the extra money to MCPS. Assuming the answer is no, don’t complain about bigger class sizes and that teachers don’t have time to respond to your emails

Similarly, teachers shouldn't complain about their workload and class sizes when they chose a pay increase over more teachers.

Similarly, you can enroll your students in private schools to keep MCPS class sizes down.

That's not how class size works. They would just update to fewer large classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

DP here.
I disagree that eastern Montgomery County is similarly priced to Frederick. East county is expensive for what you get, inconvenient and lacks amenities.

It sounds like you don't know east county *or* Frederick county very well.

Just look at what's for sale under $450k in Frederick vs eastern Montgomery County. Also, would much rather be near city of Frederick than between Baltimore and DC. Of course where you work matters too.

[Anonymous]

Anecdotally, young teachers buying in Frederick are choosing Mount Airy, Thurmont, Boonsboro, etc. Not the expensive parts closer to Frederick and Urbana.

[Anonymous]

$700k in eastern MoCo https://redf.in/OdO54R

$700k in Frederick https://redf.in/UVHkIc

Gmafb, these places are not remotely comparable real estate wise. Eastern MoCo is expensive guys.