Alleged teacher shortage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just go to the Employment section of the FCPS website. You will see the pages and pages of jobs. They are in all areas and at all grade levels.

I paid attention for the first time this school year and noticed that there were pages of jobs available all year long. Usually positions are filled by Sept 1 or August at the latest. That wasn’t the case this year.

I spoke with someone in leadership about it once during casual conversation and they confirmed that yes the shortage is real.

There are 113 openings advertised. https://careers.fcps.edu/vl/vacancy.htm ...and that includes all full and part time teacher scale positions.

That's a vacency rate of .0061

That's really, really low.

Nope, there is no shortage.

It doesn't seem like a shortage until there's 25 to 35 kids in your class. Then it definitely is!

Correct. A shortage doesn’t mean “zero teachers .” It means “every teacher have has 40 students instead of 20.”

Exactly. I can manage 35-40 per class doing DL. There is no way I can manage in person with the current class sizes because my classroom just isn't big enough to handle close to 40. Forget about hybrid - two classes of 20 per half day isn't going to work because there is no social distancing.

Parents need to get real. Your refusal to adapt to DL is the biggest problem we have right now because the logistics of hybrid and f2f for all just don't work. We don't have enough teachers!

Okay, I will just tell my 1st grader to “adapt” to learning by watching a screen all day.

You're missing the point. YOU need to adapt and be flexible. YOU need to adopt a better attitude. YOU need to do a better job modeling for your child. I'm not a teacher telling you this, I am a fellow parent telling you this. YOU need to up your game as a parent.

+1,000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reported to be said at yesterday's SB meeting:

"We have an overwhelming number of ADA requests, even for our size (10x more than a district 1/3 our size, for example) that is slowing EVERYTHING down."

-> This degree of a disproportionately large number of ADA requests in FCPS is a disgrace. Hence the parents' fury at some teachers.

How on earth is it a "disgrace" that immunocompromised people or those with immunocompromised loved ones might want to avoid hospitalization?! What the f* is wrong with you people?!

Screw those people and their families! Don't you understand? These people just DEMAND their babysitter back, no matter what, RIGHT NOW.

[Anonymous]

So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

No. There are just way more teachers than the surrounding counties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

I taught in Fairfax last year. I’m in MA this year and the district had hybrid or remote. All teachers are required to teach from the building though. I drive an hour to teach kids who are all at home because that’s the position i was hired for. It’s such a waste of gas but it’s whatever. One of our hybrid teachers has cancer, like literally still doesn’t have hair, and shes teaching hybrid and did not want to teach remote. MA also had tenure and a lot of older teachers compared to VA where I felt most teachers were in their 20’s and 30’s. Like we have many teachers in their 50s and 60s. It’s still a mess because they let kids jump from hybrid to remote and vice versa at a parent request whether it had to do with health or they just don’t like the teacher. Everyone has a mask, kids eat in the classrooms, no partner work, they can’t even really touch the books because when they do they like quarantine the book for a few days... The remote coordinator just decides things last minute and flips out at teachers for not reading her mind. They make us use Lucy Calkins. I’ve got 10 IEPs in my class and the kids can hardly write and it’s hard to help online because they don’t type, they take photos of their writing. Most kids have the IEP because they’re in fourth grade and we’re never taught phonics when they should’ve in k-2nd. I try to squeeze stuff in but it’s not part of the fourth curriculum. We were just told we can’t do breakout rooms so all the remote kids are going to be sad now. It will be all whole group and independent work.

Ranting, but my point was it’s not perfect anywhere but we even have a ton of older teachers and teachers with cancer who are teaching hybrid. I think teaching from home is better work life balance wise, and so many people are allowed to work remote now. So I get why it’s desired. But no, teacher in Fairfax county aren’t more susceptible lol. And if they’re literally getting masks, shields, and gowns that’s cool! We just have to BYOM. Bring your own mask. But every school is different. My friend elsewhere in MA got a face shield and a mask with the school logo haha..and her union won so that their teachers can work from home twice a week during full remote.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

No. There are just way more teachers than the surrounding counties.

Did you learn math in distance learning as a child? We have a much higher percentage of teachers claiming ADAs than surrounding counties. That has nothing to do with the overall size of the workforce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

No. There are just way more teachers than the surrounding counties.

Did you learn math in distance learning as a child? We have a much higher percentage of teachers claiming ADAs than surrounding counties. That has nothing to do with the overall size of the workforce.

Have other districts released their numbers? I know APS has at least 800 requests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

No. There are just way more teachers than the surrounding counties.

Did you learn math in distance learning as a child? We have a much higher percentage of teachers claiming ADAs than surrounding counties. That has nothing to do with the overall size of the workforce.

Have other districts released their numbers? I know APS has at least 800 requests

No, they haven’t. APS is also tiny. Percentage wise I’d be interested in knowing what overall percentages each county had. And a break down of instructional staff vs. operational staff. It’s great that he said “more,” but what does that more entail. FCPS has more employees. What percentage of them applied to ADA? Anyone have a citation for that number?

[Anonymous]

In MCPS the kids get violent, belligerent, and just walk out of class. Teachers are fired and nonrenewed for the kids bad behavior and the admin and mcea have no support or plan except for to send the kids back to class to harass the others. Teachers are demoralized because no one knows how to deal and then inflate the grades in the end before they are cycled out and fired. Screw teaching. That's the new mindset of educators these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

I don't think it's in the water. It's in the job. I was a teacher in fcps, and most of the older teachers are incredibly unhealthy. They are all overweight, a lot have diabetes, and even the younger ones seem to have a lot of medical problems. I think it's because they work 60+ hours a week, don't have time to eat anything good during the day, are showered with "appreciation" from PTA's which almost always takes the form of junk food (our school actually asked them to stop putting cupcakes in the teacher's lounge, and they still did it), and are under constant stress from administrators and high stakes testing. It's a recipe for disease.

[Anonymous]

Have other districts released their numbers? I know APS has at least 800 requests

Again, this is APS HR's own fault. They didn't communicate to teachers that the criteria for 2021 was different from the fall criteria. As an example, I applied and was approved for the fall because I have a high-risk family member in my home which qualified under the CARES CDC criteria. I simply reapplied as APS directed for the spring, and there was a checkbox for this criteria.

If APS had told me it was no longer an option, I wouldn't have applied this time because I would have known it didn't qualify. APS has brought extra work of sorting through applications that they knew wouldn't qualify this time because they didn't tell teachers or staff that the conditions for telework or accommodations had changed from the first round in the fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

I don't think it's in the water. It's in the job. I was a teacher in fcps, and most of the older teachers are incredibly unhealthy. They are all overweight, a lot have diabetes, and even the younger ones seem to have a lot of medical problems. I think it's because they work 60+ hours a week, don't have time to eat anything good during the day, are showered with "appreciation" from PTA's which almost always takes the form of junk food (our school actually asked them to stop putting cupcakes in the teacher's lounge, and they still did it), and are under constant stress from administrators and high stakes testing. It's a recipe for disease.

Sure... cupcakes lmao

I worked in SE DC before landing a job in NOVA. Keep talking about cupcakes. 😂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So there’s something in the water in Fairfax that makes our teachers ten times more likely to have a certain discrete set of serious medical conditions than other districts? We need to get Erin Brockovich up here to investigate.

I don't think it's in the water. It's in the job. I was a teacher in fcps, and most of the older teachers are incredibly unhealthy. They are all overweight, a lot have diabetes, and even the younger ones seem to have a lot of medical problems. I think it's because they work 60+ hours a week, don't have time to eat anything good during the day, are showered with "appreciation" from PTA's which almost always takes the form of junk food (our school actually asked them to stop putting cupcakes in the teacher's lounge, and they still did it), and are under constant stress from administrators and high stakes testing. It's a recipe for disease.

Sure... cupcakes lmao

I worked in SE DC before landing a job in NOVA. Keep talking about cupcakes. 😂

It wasn't DC, but it was one of the lowest income schools in NoVa, and it was pretty damn stressful. The cupcakes came from the 4 middle class moms in the school who seemed to think they could make everything better by feeding us. Not to be unappreciative, but cupcakes, no matter how delicious, just make you fat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Have other districts released their numbers? I know APS has at least 800 requests

Again, this is APS HR's own fault. They didn't communicate to teachers that the criteria for 2021 was different from the fall criteria. As an example, I applied and was approved for the fall because I have a high-risk family member in my home which qualified under the CARES CDC criteria. I simply reapplied as APS directed for the spring, and there was a checkbox for this criteria.

If APS had told me it was no longer an option, I wouldn't have applied this time because I would have known it didn't qualify. APS has brought extra work of sorting through applications that they knew wouldn't qualify this time because they didn't tell teachers or staff that the conditions for telework or accommodations had changed from the first round in the fall.

This is an old thread so those numbers are from the fall. Either way, they did communicate these changes at one of the staff town halls. I'm surprised all of these people who are hyper-online posting articles and complaints all day did not manage to notice that the CARES Act was expiring on December 31st.