Does the MCPS proposal for zero additional teachers at programs hold water?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Read my lips. No new teachers. Trust me on that one.

So we happen to have a bunch of NIH post docs already at MCPS to create four new programs along the lines of Blair SMCS? Because if the teachers are not all at the same high level, then the proposed plan will not equitably executed. There’s a difference between teachers at MIT and teachers at the local community college.[/quote]

You could get an elementary teacher who decided to go to high school. You just never know. Often they force teachers to learn new subjects that are out of their depth. How do I know? Happened to me! Took me a couple of years to get out of that pigeonhole (I was forced to teach coding and robotics AND source my own robots because the school’s were too old. HATED it). You can teach out of your curriculum area for one year. They take advantage of that. [/quote]

I thought it was 3 years in a row you could teach outside of your content area. That’s how my old school staffed their engineering electives. We had an elementary media specialist teaching the MS engineering
Electives. She followed another teacher who taught the classes outside of his content area for 3 years as well

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not very familiar with how high school staffing works or with the details of the qualifications needed to teach in the various programs MCPS is proposing, so although it doesn't seem right to me, I would love to hear from folks who understand this better.

MCPS is saying there will not be any extra staffing for any of these programs (except for one program coordinator per school covering all programs at that school), and that the teachers will just come out of the regular staffing allocations at each high school. They have also said that the new programs will phase in so that teachers would only be teaching the program classes to 9th graders the first year, 9th and 10th the second, etc.

Does that seem like it will work? Do schools already have the staff needed to teach most or all of these classes, and will they have enough space in their schedules to add the new program classes without decreasing access to classes for non-program students? Will this still be true at schools that lose a lot of their staff due to drops in enrollment after the boundary changes? (I believe high schools lose about 4 teachers for every 100 students they lose?)

Or are any of the classes for the programs specialized enough that some schools may not already have the staff needed to teach them, and if so, how would they find the space in the staffing budget to add new teachers? Are there non-program classes they could cut to make this work? Would these specialized teachers be able to take over other standard classes for non-program students to make a full schedule, or would they need to hire these teachers at a 0.2 or 0.4 the first year and slowly build up (and would teachers be OK with that)?

The proposed classes for the various programs are here (pages 37-86), for reference: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMJHXR4AA9BD/$file/Boundary%20Studies%20Program%20Analysis%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

There’s no viable alternative to hiring except phase in, but even phase in won’t be enough because each section of a program is one lesson section of a gen pop class that a teacher can take on.

I saw this at my school. We had a mostly magnet teacher take on an elective instead of one comprehensive course. For two years afterwards, the comprehensive classes for her grade level swelled. Eventually, the county granted us an allocation that covered the fifth class. Meanwhile, the rest of us teaching a mixed load were told that we couldn’t pick up an elective due to the impact on comprehensive.

The single program coordinator is a very bad idea. They can’t serve multiple masters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not very familiar with how high school staffing works or with the details of the qualifications needed to teach in the various programs MCPS is proposing, so although it doesn't seem right to me, I would love to hear from folks who understand this better.

MCPS is saying there will not be any extra staffing for any of these programs (except for one program coordinator per school covering all programs at that school), and that the teachers will just come out of the regular staffing allocations at each high school. They have also said that the new programs will phase in so that teachers would only be teaching the program classes to 9th graders the first year, 9th and 10th the second, etc.

Does that seem like it will work? Do schools already have the staff needed to teach most or all of these classes, and will they have enough space in their schedules to add the new program classes without decreasing access to classes for non-program students? Will this still be true at schools that lose a lot of their staff due to drops in enrollment after the boundary changes? (I believe high schools lose about 4 teachers for every 100 students they lose?)

Or are any of the classes for the programs specialized enough that some schools may not already have the staff needed to teach them, and if so, how would they find the space in the staffing budget to add new teachers? Are there non-program classes they could cut to make this work? Would these specialized teachers be able to take over other standard classes for non-program students to make a full schedule, or would they need to hire these teachers at a 0.2 or 0.4 the first year and slowly build up (and would teachers be OK with that)?

The proposed classes for the various programs are here (pages 37-86), for reference: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DMJHXR4AA9BD/$file/Boundary%20Studies%20Program%20Analysis%20Update%20251016%20PPT%20REV.pdf

No new staffing means the total number of teachers in the school (and in the district) isn’t going to increase. It doesn’t mean there won’t be any shifting around of teachers.

There are already more highly qualified teachers to teach advanced courses in each school than there are sections of advanced courses. The majority of classes in the program shifts can be covered. Some specialty classes may need teachers to also move, especially if the entire program moves. For example, when they shifted the upcounty MS humanities magnet from Clemente to MLK, they rolled it up by grade level and the existing teachers in the program were given the option to transfer with the program. Some did, some didn’t.

And it did a lot of damage to the program, which isn’t as robust as it’s Eastern counterpart.