How does this end?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I absolutely believe that large districts across the country will start implementing a 4 day week for students. The 5th day will be used for planning and meetings.

But that makes no sense.

Yes, planning time needs to return to teachers' schedules. But the way to do that is to return planning time to teachers'schedules, not to close schools for 20% of the school week.

Protecting the planning time we currently have would be a start.

I assume a 4 day student week would push the start of the school year back into earlier in the summer and the end of the SY later. If that's the case I'm sticking with the 5 day student week please.

ES Teacher

The 4-day-week poster is envisioning the 5th day as an asynchronous day, so kids will stay home and do assigned work or ST Math/Lexia on their laptops. No change in the calendar start and end dates.

Thank god that’s illegal at the state level now

Oh, look. Governor Youngkin found the chat. Go stuff it, Govna.

[Anonymous]

If teachers had to physically be in the building on the 5th day for meetings/planning, I doubt many would welcome it. They have kids who would no longer be in school those days either, creating a child care hurdle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If teachers had to physically be in the building on the 5th day for meetings/planning, I doubt many would welcome it. They have kids who would no longer be in school those days either, creating a child care hurdle.

Would you be willing to accept it if it meant FCPS was able to hire a teacher to teach your child(ren)? Or retain the amazing teacher who has been at your school for 10 years instead of giving your family a teacher resident with no background in K12?

[Anonymous]

For those who are curious- there is a big public advocacy meeting this week related to collective bargaining for staff. I am hopeful we see many teachers and parents speaking to working conditions for teachers and paraprofessionals and how ridiculous they have become.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those who are curious- there is a big public advocacy meeting this week related to collective bargaining for staff. I am hopeful we see many teachers and parents speaking to working conditions for teachers and paraprofessionals and how ridiculous they have become.

It’s a public hearing on Dec. 15 at Luther Jackson.

Yes! I’ll be in attendance in support.

[Anonymous]

I say this as a decades-long FCPS parent; student attrition!

Anecdata, but Covid initiated an immediate switch to private schools and the majority of students were older elementary through middle school and haven’t and won’t return to FCPS.

So, there’s that. Also these are coveted school pyramids so parents strategically moved for the FCPS ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They really need to bring back the "half day Mondays" (what we called them).

Every Monday was a 2 hr early release. Period.

Predictable.
No random teacher work days or other wonky early dismissals.

A compromise that might work given the situation

That wouldn’t do it for me - I mean, that’s not a “benefit” that would compensate for a lower salary.

So you don't want more planning time? That seems to have been a useful block of time for ES teachers and getting rid of it seems to have caused lots of strain.

I taught back when we had half day Mondays. They were often full of meetings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They really need to bring back the "half day Mondays" (what we called them).

Every Monday was a 2 hr early release. Period.

Predictable.
No random teacher work days or other wonky early dismissals.

A compromise that might work given the situation

That wouldn’t do it for me - I mean, that’s not a “benefit” that would compensate for a lower salary.

So you don't want more planning time? That seems to have been a useful block of time for ES teachers and getting rid of it seems to have caused lots of strain.

I taught back when we had half day Mondays. They were often full of meetings.

Do you have fewer meetings now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They really need to bring back the "half day Mondays" (what we called them).

Every Monday was a 2 hr early release. Period.

Predictable.
No random teacher work days or other wonky early dismissals.

A compromise that might work given the situation

That wouldn’t do it for me - I mean, that’s not a “benefit” that would compensate for a lower salary.

So you don't want more planning time? That seems to have been a useful block of time for ES teachers and getting rid of it seems to have caused lots of strain.

I taught back when we had half day Mondays. They were often full of meetings.

When we had early release Mondays (the students were in school for more than half a day), we often had meetings on Mondays and less planning time T-F than we have now. When they did away with the early release they wrote a policy that states ES teachers are supposed to have a minimum of 300 minutes planning time each week. Of those 300 minutes at least 240 are to be teacher directed and a minimum of 60 are to be spent meeting collaboratively. I think most schools don’t adhere to the 240 minutes of teacher directed time.

With a CBA, planning time could be contractual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I absolutely believe that large districts across the country will start implementing a 4 day week for students. The 5th day will be used for planning and meetings.

This is literally the only thing I see helping to retain teachers. FCPS won’t be able to come up with the kind of money to do it salary-wise. Otherwise the drip drip drip of teachers leaving for private sector WFH jobs will become a river. Especially as the older generation that prefers the traditional schedule phases out. This will sooner rather than later. We simply can’t go on with then current system of running teachers into the ground.

\

This....parents don't truly realize it's bad for your child's teacher right now. More will leave this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only hope I have is that FCPS will finally pass a collective bargaining agreement. Teachers are the experts on what teachers need and don’t need. I’m sick of the entire profession being controlled by people who have never spent time in a classroom professionally and have NO idea.

With power, teachers can insist on the class sizes, planning time, staffing ratios, and compensation that our community needs in order to strengthen our entire public education system and make the teaching profession more attractive to retain existing good teachers and recruit new teachers.

Teachers know what our classrooms need. We need the power to actually do what we know the KIDS need. Please help us get that power by letting your school board know that you support collective bargaining!!!

+1
I hope see you at the public hearing on Dec 15!

I'll be there...hope all the parents saying how much they care about teachers and schools will be supporting us!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the record, nobody has advocated for a Friday afternoon off. Some have advocated for shifting weekend or non-contract work into an actual work day so that our teachers can be parents and spouses at night. Students can do asynchronous math and reading for 2 hours and be completely fine.

^ Example of completely nuts.

Somebody told me the definition of insanity is perpetuating a status quo that isn’t working. So let’s then continue to work our underpaid public workers into the ground and cross our fingers that teachers stop resigning and that college students wake up next year and want to be teachers again.

I’ll hold my breath for you.

Thank you for writing this....all of it spot on. Some parents and Gatehouse people are living in some weird fairytale. I guess if you close your eyes tight enough you don't see the situation for what it truly is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a special education teacher. I'm on year 23. If I could quit tomorrow I would. Special education has become a nightmare. I love the teaching aspect of it and I generally have no issues with parents. But the excessive paperwork and meetings...I just can't anymore. I am CONSTANTLY missing class for meetings. And about 90% of all my planning time is writing IEPs, narratives, goals, taking data, filling in progress reports, responding to the neverending onslaught of requests for information for IEPs for kids I teach, etc. I also foolishly got certified to test kids so now I'm losing time I don't have to do that. Normally teachers who test are given an extra planning to compensate. Not me! They needed me to teach all the classes I was given as there's no one else to do it since we lost funding for multiple sped positions somehow (even though my classes are bigger than ever???) I was also given a new curriculum to teach this year so I'm trying to figure all that out too. My teaching itself....you know, the thing I was actually hired to do, is literally the last thing that gets my attention.

I'm so over it. I was absolutely planning on working past my retirement date because I used to love what I do. Now, I am retiring pretty much as soon as I am able and moving on to something else. These working conditions are atrocious. And I'm at a GOOD school with an amazing admin and fabulous co-workers.

My dream would be the federal government funding multiple new special ed teachers for every school but that will never happen because even if the money was there, no one wants this job.

Oh yeah...and the two year pay raise for special education teachers that they're now taking away? Talk about morale killer. They literally admitted that we deserve to be compensated for all of our extra work by giving us those raises and by taking them away, they're basically saying they don't value what we do enough to pay us for it.

The budget documents include the extended special Ed teacher contracts.

No budget document I looked at included maintaining the current sped teacher pay raise that was temporarily funded with a two year grant. Special education teachers are dropping like flies and when they drop their pay next year, it could get ugly. I'm forced to stick it out because I'm too far in and just biding my time to retirement but any teacher in the first five years or so of their career would do best to run now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If teachers had to physically be in the building on the 5th day for meetings/planning, I doubt many would welcome it. They have kids who would no longer be in school those days either, creating a child care hurdle.

Would you be willing to accept it if it meant FCPS was able to hire a teacher to teach your child(ren)? Or retain the amazing teacher who has been at your school for 10 years instead of giving your family a teacher resident with no background in K12?

either way my kids are supplementing outside.

[Anonymous]

Per board docs, FCPS has now had 860 staff resign this year. YIKES