MCPS faces Teacher shortage next year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think news reports such as this are unhelpful and don’t really paint a clear picture. Is it inconvenient that teachers are being moved around? Absolutely. But would you rather the district did nothing or waited until the end of August? Would people be happy if some schools were fully staffed with no classes above size limits but then other schools had dozens of classes well above class size or worse with no teacher at all.

There is a teacher shortage crises nationwide including across the DMV. So making it seem like the sky is falling in MCPS when this is really a much bigger issue is sort of skewed.

What size limits? There are no class sizes limits in the state of Maryland! Follow the news about the lawsuit electives teachers in Virginia won for having class sizes too large and you see yet another way Maryland is behind the rest of the country in best practices. I bet many of these 35+ classes in MCPS are posing a safety hazard and break fire code

[Anonymous]

Olney area schools, Magruder and Damascus area well known to have very little turnover due to affordable local housing options and relatively easy commutes from Frederick Co and Howard Counties. Once staff get a job there, they rarely leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Olney area schools, Magruder and Damascus area well known to have very little turnover due to affordable local housing options and relatively easy commutes from Frederick Co and Howard Counties. Once staff get a job there, they rarely leave.

Have you been keeping up with the thread about involuntary transfers happening in large numbers this week at Sherwood?

Here's an example...

From what I’ve read, it’s about 40 SENIORS who were informed that they will now have to attend their home school. These are students who have been part of this ELL program for the past few years. These are students who are part of the school community, participate in sports/extra curricular activities at the school, have relationships with staff and students, etc. The program was being phased out, but from what I understand these students were told they would be allowed to stay for their senior year. That’s now been taken away. These students generally don’t have parents who are squeaky wheels. Who is advocating for them? How is this what’s best for these kids? From what I’ve read (from teachers from this school), these seniors were notified this week about this abrupt change. This is the reason for some staff being involuntarily transferred.


The twitter below belongs to a teacher a teacher who has been at Sherwood for a number of years...
https://mobile.twitter.com/CoachGrier/status/1550444005841944577

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think news reports such as this are unhelpful and don’t really paint a clear picture. Is it inconvenient that teachers are being moved around? Absolutely. But would you rather the district did nothing or waited until the end of August? Would people be happy if some schools were fully staffed with no classes above size limits but then other schools had dozens of classes well above class size or worse with no teacher at all.

There is a teacher shortage crises nationwide including across the DMV. So making it seem like the sky is falling in MCPS when this is really a much bigger issue is sort of skewed.

What size limits? There are no class sizes limits in the state of Maryland! Follow the news about the lawsuit electives teachers in Virginia won for having class sizes too large and you see yet another way Maryland is behind the rest of the country in best practices. I bet many of these 35+ classes in MCPS are posing a safety hazard and break fire code

That's odd since we only had 16 in our youngest 1st grade last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Olney area schools, Magruder and Damascus area well known to have very little turnover due to affordable local housing options and relatively easy commutes from Frederick Co and Howard Counties. Once staff get a job there, they rarely leave.

Have you been keeping up with the thread about involuntary transfers happening in large numbers this week at Sherwood?

Here's an example...

From what I’ve read, it’s about 40 SENIORS who were informed that they will now have to attend their home school. These are students who have been part of this ELL program for the past few years. These are students who are part of the school community, participate in sports/extra curricular activities at the school, have relationships with staff and students, etc. The program was being phased out, but from what I understand these students were told they would be allowed to stay for their senior year. That’s now been taken away. These students generally don’t have parents who are squeaky wheels. Who is advocating for them? How is this what’s best for these kids? From what I’ve read (from teachers from this school), these seniors were notified this week about this abrupt change. This is the reason for some staff being involuntarily transferred.


The twitter below belongs to a teacher a teacher who has been at Sherwood for a number of years...
https://mobile.twitter.com/CoachGrier/status/1550444005841944577

Sounds like they're doing their best to proactively address the teacher shortages caused by burnout after the global pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Olney area schools, Magruder and Damascus area well known to have very little turnover due to affordable local housing options and relatively easy commutes from Frederick Co and Howard Counties. Once staff get a job there, they rarely leave.

Have you been keeping up with the thread about involuntary transfers happening in large numbers this week at Sherwood?

Here's an example...

From what I’ve read, it’s about 40 SENIORS who were informed that they will now have to attend their home school. These are students who have been part of this ELL program for the past few years. These are students who are part of the school community, participate in sports/extra curricular activities at the school, have relationships with staff and students, etc. The program was being phased out, but from what I understand these students were told they would be allowed to stay for their senior year. That’s now been taken away. These students generally don’t have parents who are squeaky wheels. Who is advocating for them? How is this what’s best for these kids? From what I’ve read (from teachers from this school), these seniors were notified this week about this abrupt change. This is the reason for some staff being involuntarily transferred.


The twitter below belongs to a teacher a teacher who has been at Sherwood for a number of years...
https://mobile.twitter.com/CoachGrier/status/1550444005841944577

Wow, that's awful for those kids. As usual, kids keep suffering because of adult decisions and priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone that disputes the MCPS teacher shortage, just look at the drastic measures they are taking now to cover infilled positions. Since the state prevents any negotiation on class sizes, be prepared for HUGE classes all over the district.

https://wjla.com/news/crisis-in-the-classrooms/montgomery-county-public-schools-involuntary-teacher-transfer-staffing-shortage-employees-recruit-open-position-hiring-job-summer-break-mcps-maryland-challenges-surplus-deficit-new-year-back-to-school

The future of mcps doesn’t look very bright. I wonder why they don’t offer higher salaries to attract teachers

Budget? I’m not saying they can’t offer more, but they’d have to re-prioritize.

The BOE admitted last year that the school system has enough money, with all the extra Covid funds.

It’s not about the budget, or else MCPS wouldn’t be throwing money away the way it does at all the useless initiatives it implements.

As I said, they’d have to re-prioritize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Olney area schools, Magruder and Damascus area well known to have very little turnover due to affordable local housing options and relatively easy commutes from Frederick Co and Howard Counties. Once staff get a job there, they rarely leave.

Have you been keeping up with the thread about involuntary transfers happening in large numbers this week at Sherwood?

Here's an example...

From what I’ve read, it’s about 40 SENIORS who were informed that they will now have to attend their home school. These are students who have been part of this ELL program for the past few years. These are students who are part of the school community, participate in sports/extra curricular activities at the school, have relationships with staff and students, etc. The program was being phased out, but from what I understand these students were told they would be allowed to stay for their senior year. That’s now been taken away. These students generally don’t have parents who are squeaky wheels. Who is advocating for them? How is this what’s best for these kids? From what I’ve read (from teachers from this school), these seniors were notified this week about this abrupt change. This is the reason for some staff being involuntarily transferred.


The twitter below belongs to a teacher a teacher who has been at Sherwood for a number of years...
https://mobile.twitter.com/CoachGrier/status/1550444005841944577

Wow, that's awful for those kids. As usual, kids keep suffering because of adult decisions and priorities.

Blame the right adults though. Why is there a teacher shortage? Because teachers have had enough and they are leaving. They are sick of ridiculous testing, crappy curriculum, no materials, no subs, no enforcement of rules by admin, verbal and physical abuse by students and parents, etc.

[Anonymous]

These teacher shortages are everywhere.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLg6DkdATB8

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think we are losing teachers to other systems as much as we are losing teachers to other jobs, or just retiring early. There was a post on here a while ago from someone saying she was leaving teaching to get an office job at like a PR firm or something like that. If you are in your 20s and can pivot over to one of the many office type jobs that pay decently where you don’t have to be on your feet talking 6 hours a day and dodging pencils and stuff kids throw at you and breathing in the smell of 35 sweaty teenagers all day long while they make fun of the way you dress or speak…..yeah, that’s attractive.
I don’t know if they are doing exit interviews and what people say about the pay versus other issues. I think they need to raise the pay 25%, fix the cap on laterals coming in from other systems (particularly given how many families move to this area from other locations—we are losing out on a lot of training spouse teachers!), and stop giving them lots of new curriculum directives without sufficient time to train on them or create new materials for them.

Yes! Teachers are definitely leaving for other jobs, especially the young teachers. Enrollment is down for teacher programs so the pool of teachers is getting smaller.

[Anonymous]

Moving the ELL program out of Sherwood reduces the number of students at Sherwood and gives MCPS an excuse to reassign staff. It seems clean that to shuffle staff around they also need to shuffle students/programs around. The math makes sense even though it is more disruptive. Definitely a bad look to pick on a ESL program given all the talk about equity though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone that disputes the MCPS teacher shortage, just look at the drastic measures they are taking now to cover infilled positions. Since the state prevents any negotiation on class sizes, be prepared for HUGE classes all over the district.

https://wjla.com/news/crisis-in-the-classrooms/montgomery-county-public-schools-involuntary-teacher-transfer-staffing-shortage-employees-recruit-open-position-hiring-job-summer-break-mcps-maryland-challenges-surplus-deficit-new-year-back-to-school

The future of mcps doesn’t look very bright. I wonder why they don’t offer higher salaries to attract teachers

Budget? I’m not saying they can’t offer more, but they’d have to re-prioritize.

The BOE admitted last year that the school system has enough money, with all the extra Covid funds.

It’s not about the budget, or else MCPS wouldn’t be throwing money away the way it does at all the useless initiatives it implements.

Does Maryland's Maintenance of Effort come into play?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Olney area schools, Magruder and Damascus area well known to have very little turnover due to affordable local housing options and relatively easy commutes from Frederick Co and Howard Counties. Once staff get a job there, they rarely leave.

Have you been keeping up with the thread about involuntary transfers happening in large numbers this week at Sherwood?

Here's an example...

From what I’ve read, it’s about 40 SENIORS who were informed that they will now have to attend their home school. These are students who have been part of this ELL program for the past few years. These are students who are part of the school community, participate in sports/extra curricular activities at the school, have relationships with staff and students, etc. The program was being phased out, but from what I understand these students were told they would be allowed to stay for their senior year. That’s now been taken away. These students generally don’t have parents who are squeaky wheels. Who is advocating for them? How is this what’s best for these kids? From what I’ve read (from teachers from this school), these seniors were notified this week about this abrupt change. This is the reason for some staff being involuntarily transferred.


The twitter below belongs to a teacher a teacher who has been at Sherwood for a number of years...
https://mobile.twitter.com/CoachGrier/status/1550444005841944577

Sounds like they're doing their best to proactively address the teacher shortages caused by burnout after the global pandemic.

Its no longer a global pandemic. School was fully in person last year and everyone pretended like the pandemic was over. This is a bigger issue than covid.

[Anonymous]

Given how teachers are discussed on here I can understand why nobody wants to stay in the profession. It always seems to be the public service jobs that are subject to all of the Monday morning quarterbacking. I was a teacher for a long time and it's so much more complicated than what it looks like to most people. We all think we know because we've been in schools as students. I'd argue that MCPS pays nicely for teaching jobs but it's still not enough money to deal with all the bullshit that goes along with the job. I moved to a job in the private sector and my work/life balance improved greatly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Moving the ELL program out of Sherwood reduces the number of students at Sherwood and gives MCPS an excuse to reassign staff. It seems clean that to shuffle staff around they also need to shuffle students/programs around. The math makes sense even though it is more disruptive. Definitely a bad look to pick on a ESL program given all the talk about equity though.

+1

MCPS is screwing over those poor kids.

Imagine if your rising senior was sent to a new school for senior year. How would you feel?

They are using these kids because they know their parents aren’t equipped to complain.

Time to launch a mutiny. Take to Twitter. Help those poor kids stay and graduate.

If you care about equity, then take action.