How is FCPS teacher/staff shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:17 teachers leaving my ES (including 2 who left and didn’t come back in May). 40% of my spouse’s MS colleagues not returning.

Anyone who thinks this is normal is insane.

What school district is this in?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Parent here. I checked the vacancy list and there are many openings at Sleepy Hollow, where DD goes.

I work for the county and the amount of vacancies is nothing that I have seen before. Also - the school board reported on their premier workforce goal and they admitted that they had made no progress towards their goal of having 5 highly qualified candidates apply for each teaching position.

I wonder if they mean they aren’t getting 5 highly qualified applicants or 5 applicants total. I wouldn’t be shocked either way

One specific school I am thinking about is having to hire all provisionally licensed sped staff - By highly qualified I guess they mean fully licensed and experienced? I am not sure of the criteria.

Provisional is not always bad. You could have a teacher with 20 years who needs a provisional because they just moved here from out of state. The worry comes when you are hiring warm bodies.

Yeah, most of the ones I’ve worked with have been warm bodies or leave after a year or two before they finish the required licensing requirements.

Thats sad for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17 teachers leaving my ES (including 2 who left and didn’t come back in May). 40% of my spouse’s MS colleagues not returning.

Anyone who thinks this is normal is insane.

What school district is this in?

What forum are you reading? Therein lies your answer.

[Anonymous]

Just got the year end email from the principal. Included a list of departing staff members. Only 6 classroom teachers in a K-6 school seems very reasonable. Three special ed teachers though, which seems like a common theme.

Looking forward, the quote is that they are “almost already fully staffed.” Hope that is the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't special ed and other specialized teachers get paid more?

Good question. I always wondered why they’re on the same payscale as general ed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't special ed and other specialized teachers get paid more?

Good question. I always wondered why they’re on the same payscale as general ed.

Some areas do give stipends for "hard-to-fill" assignments

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't special ed and other specialized teachers get paid more?

Good question. I always wondered why they’re on the same payscale as general ed.

Some areas do give stipends for "hard-to-fill" assignments

School systems don't want to pay more for hard to fill positions, since it gives leverage to teachers to get pay raises for all sorts of reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I'm in the WSHS pyramid. Looked at the elementary feeder schools. All of them only have 1-3 openings. Even the high school only has 2 openings. Obviously, the staff shortage is not uniform across the county. And morale is high both at our base elementary school and our AAP center school.

FCPS certainly has challenges in front of it and ahead of it, but this "sky is falling" or "Titanic" mentality is sheer hyperbole.

Title 1 schools have early hiring preference, by law, for the most highly qualified and experienced teachers and instructional assistants as they come into FCPS. This means that over time the Title 1 schools will be taking in the best applicants.

lol. The best applicants are not going to title 1 schools.

That’s not necessarily true, but keep in mind there are no Title 1 high schools and only 1-2 middle schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just got the year end email from the principal. Included a list of departing staff members. Only 6 classroom teachers in a K-6 school seems very reasonable. Three special ed teachers though, which seems like a common theme.

Looking forward, the quote is that they are “almost already fully staffed.” Hope that is the case.

I would be aware that this may not reflect the whole picture. Our elementary shared the list in an email and it was nearly all IAs and specials teachers. Since then I have learned about two more regular teachers leaving.

[Anonymous]

The former middle school I was at only has 10 teachers returning out of their entire staff. It’s that bad. They lost nearly 40 teachers this year.

My current school only has 9 people leaving. Night and day at various campuses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The former middle school I was at only has 10 teachers returning out of their entire staff. It’s that bad. They lost nearly 40 teachers this year.

My current school only has 9 people leaving. Night and day at various campuses.

That’s really bad. The region higher ups and the school board need to take action if the majority of the people leaving aren’t retiring or moving out of state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't special ed and other specialized teachers get paid more?

Good question. I always wondered why they’re on the same payscale as general ed.

I think it's because SPED and Gen Ed inclusion teachers work together and deal with the same students. How can you compensate one of them and not the other. You could do it if teachers went back to self contained classrooms but that goes against LRE(Least restrictive environment )

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't special ed and other specialized teachers get paid more?

Good question. I always wondered why they’re on the same payscale as general ed.

I think it's because SPED and Gen Ed inclusion teachers work together and deal with the same students. How can you compensate one of them and not the other. You could do it if teachers went back to self contained classrooms but that goes against LRE(Least restrictive environment )

You could provide a stipend for every student on an IEP. I think it would be rather easy to justify it as additional pay for time spent doing data collection/writing IEP goals. Give it to the SPED teacher and Gen Ed if applicable

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't special ed and other specialized teachers get paid more?

Good question. I always wondered why they’re on the same payscale as general ed.

I think it's because SPED and Gen Ed inclusion teachers work together and deal with the same students. How can you compensate one of them and not the other. You could do it if teachers went back to self contained classrooms but that goes against LRE(Least restrictive environment )

There are many self contained classrooms throughout FCPS schools. Regarding inclusion, the special education teacher is the one handling the goals for kids in inclusive settings. They are also handling reading, writing and/or math in a pull-out setting. They’re doing the IEP paperwork and data collection in addition to lesson planning and grading for students they serve. There’s a reason they leave in droves and a reason they should be compensated at a different rate.

[Anonymous]

Self-contained should be on a separate pay scale, full stop. There's no reason a PE teacher should be on the same pay scale as a teacher who works in an EAC classroom. The requirements to work in self contained should be a lot higher though, too.