Study Reveals FCPS Teacher Career Salaries $142K Below Average of Regional Peers

[Anonymous]

Here is the supplemental services schedule for FCPS

http://www.fcps.edu/hr/salary/pdf/fy16/FY16SalarySupplements.pdf

While a head football coach may make a decent stipend (though it's a lot of extra hours put in), most of the other coaches and advisors don't make a much, considering the amount of extra time they put in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We just lost the best teacher any of our children have had in FCPS to Arlington. Multiple kids and lots of teachers, so sad to lose this one and concerned about who else we might lose.

As a Fairfax County parent and taxpayer (and FCPS employee) this is my biggest concern. Our elementary school had classroom vacancies from mid-summer until halfway through October this year because every single halfway decent candidate who would interview and be offered the job ended up taking a job in Loudoun or Arlington. And it's not just the salary difference, though that is substantial. Our average class sizes are MUCH bigger than surrounding counties. Our average special education caseloads are much higher per teacher. So, would you rather teach a class of 22 4th graders (4 of whom are mainstreamed special education students) for $55K a year, or teach a class of 32 4th graders, 14 of whom are mainstreamed special education students, for $46K a year? Most people with better options took them. And so our kids started the year with subs. And the people we hired in October are not the same in terms of quality and experience than the people we lost to neighboring counties.

Is that what you want for your kids? Not me.

This is what chronic under-funding has done.

APS doesn't have nearly as good programs as FCPS.

[Anonymous]

One thing that teachers shouldn't have to spend time on is recess duty, but I've noticed all the FCPS teachers are responsible for this. It would be cheaper to have a SACC teacher handle this time or even a resource or specialist teacher handle it to give the core subject teachers more time for planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is the supplemental services schedule for FCPS

http://www.fcps.edu/hr/salary/pdf/fy16/FY16SalarySupplements.pdf

While a head football coach may make a decent stipend (though it's a lot of extra hours put in), most of the other coaches and advisors don't make a much, considering the amount of extra time they put in.

I can see why someone earning 70K might be movivated to take one of those positions. But if you hike up the salaries to something enormous like 300K what teacher is going to want to give up his/her afternoons and Friday nights for 7K or less (would you??). Do you then have to jack up the stipend so that someone making 300K will even consider doing it? Do you hire additional staff to assume those duties?

[Anonymous]

Why do teachers have to take these positions? We have summer swim coaches getting similar pay and they aren't teachers.

[Anonymous]

Why do teachers have to take these positions? We have summer swim coaches getting similar pay and they aren't teachers.

They don't. Lots of high school coaches are not teachers at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why do teachers have to take these positions? We have summer swim coaches getting similar pay and they aren't teachers.

They don't. Lots of high school coaches are not teachers at all.

Are we talking about the neighborhood pool or are we talking about summer swim coaches at the high school?

[Anonymous]

Either one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband teaches in FCPS. He has a Masters degree and 15 years of teaching experience (10 of them at the same FCPS school) - he makes about $65k. He's strongly considering switching to Arlington for the pay. It's tough living in this area on that kind of income. We realized we weren't going to be well-off with his career choice, but this has gotten to be too much.

We have two kids in FCPS schools, so we care about the quality of schools and teachers here. I hope FCPS finds a long-term fix soon.

I'm sorry to hear this. I'm in Arlington and I make nearly 40K more with the same amount of experience.

I hope your district finds a fix soon, or he considers coming over to Arlington. Your husband deserves to be paid fairly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband teaches in FCPS. He has a Masters degree and 15 years of teaching experience (10 of them at the same FCPS school) - he makes about $65k. He's strongly considering switching to Arlington for the pay. It's tough living in this area on that kind of income. We realized we weren't going to be well-off with his career choice, but this has gotten to be too much.

We have two kids in FCPS schools, so we care about the quality of schools and teachers here. I hope FCPS finds a long-term fix soon.

I'm sorry to hear this. I'm in Arlington and I make nearly 40K more with the same amount of experience.

I hope your district finds a fix soon, or he considers coming over to Arlington. Your husband deserves to be paid fairly.

At first I thought there is no way you are making that much more with 15 years, but page 12 of that report shows you are correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband teaches in FCPS. He has a Masters degree and 15 years of teaching experience (10 of them at the same FCPS school) - he makes about $65k. He's strongly considering switching to Arlington for the pay. It's tough living in this area on that kind of income. We realized we weren't going to be well-off with his career choice, but this has gotten to be too much.

We have two kids in FCPS schools, so we care about the quality of schools and teachers here. I hope FCPS finds a long-term fix soon.

65K seems on the low end for a teacher with his qualifications/experience in FCPS. How is it that some of his peers are make 30K+ more than him in the same school system. I am not a teacher, I have just seen 6 figure salaries reported elsewhere.

Not the PP, but a teacher with 15 years and a Masters makes in the upper 60s. The degree step does not necessarily match the number of years experience.

The only teachers making $30k more than that have almost 30 years and a MA. My DH has 23 years with FCPS and makes around $85k. Not a complaint, just a comment.

O.k. but that doesn't include all of the earning opportunities that they have during the summer and even taking on additional responsibilities at the school. They can earn more if they wish to earn more can't they?

Of course that is true about summer. Right now he watches the kids during the summer so we don't have to pay for child care. Maybe someday though! I'm not sure what extra jobs they can do during the school year that would earn them more money though (or maybe you meant that as part of the summer opportunities).

Don't they get extra for coaching a sport or being year book advisers or leading an after school activity (I'm not talking about a monthly club, I'm talking about something regular).

Not in the elementary schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well it's 180 days of school correct? The typical contract length ranges from 194 days to 260 days. I think about 200 is average. A typical school day is about 6.5 hours of which a teacher gets off about 0.5 hours. Planning time is built into the remaining 6 hours. 200 days x 6 hours = 1200 hours per year. If you wanted to add 1 hour of extra planning/grading time per day just add an additional 180-200 hours. You can divide whatever teacher pay (including or not including benefits) by these amounts to get an hourly rate.

FCPS teacher contracts are 7.5 hours per day. .5 hours of that is lunch time. The vast majority of teachers use lunch time to check email, reach out to parents, and to run lunch groups with kids.

You say that planning time is built into the school day. Here's the truth. In our elementary school, each teacher gets 1 hour of "planning time" per day. 1 out of 5 days a week, it is a mandatory Collaborative Learning Team meeting - a meeting with other teachers who teach your grade, plus special education teachers, other specialists, and administrators. So that leaves you 4 hours of planning a week. Now, that "planning time" also includes dropping off and picking up your students from another specialist -- so it may take 5-10 minutes in each direction to walk your whole class down to the gym and then go down and pick them up. So, let's say, generously, that you have 45 minutes a day to plan.

Each day, you teach blocks of 90 minutes of Language Arts, 60 minutes of Math, 45 minutes of Social Studies, 45 minutes of Science, and 30 minutes of Health. Then there is a remediation block where you are supposed to plan individualized activities for all of your students - extra help for kids who need remediation, enrichment for those who need enrichment. So, at the very least, you have to plan lessons and activities for 5 different subjects. Within Language Arts and Math, you are required to have rotations for different activities for groups at different levels. So, you're not just planning one lesson; you're planning a group lesson plus 4 additional activities.

Now, I've worked in professional fields other than teaching. And generally, when I had to do an hour-long presentation, I would take at least that long to plan for it. So, teachers are planning for 4 or 5 different blocks of instruction per day. By planning, I mean, designing the lesson, creating activities, creating SMART Board presentations or handouts, designing assessments, and making materials available online or making paper copies, locating and organizing manipulatives, etc. Do you really think any teacher can actually design quality instruction for 4 or 5 different subjects a day in just 45 minutes?!?!

On top of that, teachers are answering parent emails, returning parent calls, meeting with administrators, meeting to collaborate with specialists like a Reading Specialist and Technology Specialist, attending IEP meetings, creating spreadsheets of data, analyzing data, and, oh yeah, grading papers.

All that is supposed to happen during this planning time as well. Yeah, right.

When I taught high school, I my contract hours were up around 2:30. I stayed in the building until at least 6:30 every night, and I STILL took work home on nights and weekends. On average, I worked an additional 25 hours during the week and maybe 4-8 hours on the weekend, some weekends longer. That's IN ADDITION to the school day.

Every "vacation" - like winter break and spring break -- I'd work at least a 40 hour week grading projects and papers, planning units, and writing college recommendation letters for 80-100 kids. Summers, I'd go in early to get my classroom set up, take classes, and spend a lot of time reading and preparing for the next year (especially when you find out that all of a sudden you're teaching another grade or subject the next year and have to learn a whole new curriculum.)

Every job I have ever had in the private sector - including a technology company and on Capitol Hill - was significantly less stressful and less time consuming. Most professionals can take coffee breaks, bathroom breaks, and DCUM breaks whenever they want during the day. They can stop and talk to colleagues about work or your weekend or the news when you need a mental break. Teachers can't. When teachers need to take sick days, they have to spend hours writing lesson plans and creating activities for a person to do in their absence. None of that time is part of the built in "planning time" at school. There's no such thing as comp time or flex time.

I'm not complaining. I love my job. But I get furious when I hear people claim that we work 6.5 hour days and have all this time off. If FCPS teachers "worked to the rule" - that is, only worked their actual contract hours and did NO uncompensated work other than that - this entire system would grind to a complete halt. The school system DEPENDS on teachers planning and grading beyond contract hours and supervising clubs and extracurriculars and helping students after school and spending breaks and summers planning, preparing, and grading. So stop evaluating our compensation as if we were factory workers who got to leave when the whistle blows.

+1

The sad thing is some will see this as a complaint rather yah a refute of wrong impressions.

I think you make a good point. Teaching, and the prep that goes into it, is much different than what most adults know from their experiences in grade school growing up.

[Anonymous]

*rather than a

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well it's 180 days of school correct? The typical contract length ranges from 194 days to 260 days. I think about 200 is average. A typical school day is about 6.5 hours of which a teacher gets off about 0.5 hours. Planning time is built into the remaining 6 hours. 200 days x 6 hours = 1200 hours per year. If you wanted to add 1 hour of extra planning/grading time per day just add an additional 180-200 hours. You can divide whatever teacher pay (including or not including benefits) by these amounts to get an hourly rate.

FCPS teacher contracts are 7.5 hours per day. .5 hours of that is lunch time. The vast majority of teachers use lunch time to check email, reach out to parents, and to run lunch groups with kids.

You say that planning time is built into the school day. Here's the truth. In our elementary school, each teacher gets 1 hour of "planning time" per day. 1 out of 5 days a week, it is a mandatory Collaborative Learning Team meeting - a meeting with other teachers who teach your grade, plus special education teachers, other specialists, and administrators. So that leaves you 4 hours of planning a week. Now, that "planning time" also includes dropping off and picking up your students from another specialist -- so it may take 5-10 minutes in each direction to walk your whole class down to the gym and then go down and pick them up. So, let's say, generously, that you have 45 minutes a day to plan.

Each day, you teach blocks of 90 minutes of Language Arts, 60 minutes of Math, 45 minutes of Social Studies, 45 minutes of Science, and 30 minutes of Health. Then there is a remediation block where you are supposed to plan individualized activities for all of your students - extra help for kids who need remediation, enrichment for those who need enrichment. So, at the very least, you have to plan lessons and activities for 5 different subjects. Within Language Arts and Math, you are required to have rotations for different activities for groups at different levels. So, you're not just planning one lesson; you're planning a group lesson plus 4 additional activities.

Now, I've worked in professional fields other than teaching. And generally, when I had to do an hour-long presentation, I would take at least that long to plan for it. So, teachers are planning for 4 or 5 different blocks of instruction per day. By planning, I mean, designing the lesson, creating activities, creating SMART Board presentations or handouts, designing assessments, and making materials available online or making paper copies, locating and organizing manipulatives, etc. Do you really think any teacher can actually design quality instruction for 4 or 5 different subjects a day in just 45 minutes?!?!

On top of that, teachers are answering parent emails, returning parent calls, meeting with administrators, meeting to collaborate with specialists like a Reading Specialist and Technology Specialist, attending IEP meetings, creating spreadsheets of data, analyzing data, and, oh yeah, grading papers.

All that is supposed to happen during this planning time as well. Yeah, right.

When I taught high school, I my contract hours were up around 2:30. I stayed in the building until at least 6:30 every night, and I STILL took work home on nights and weekends. On average, I worked an additional 25 hours during the week and maybe 4-8 hours on the weekend, some weekends longer. That's IN ADDITION to the school day.

Every "vacation" - like winter break and spring break -- I'd work at least a 40 hour week grading projects and papers, planning units, and writing college recommendation letters for 80-100 kids. Summers, I'd go in early to get my classroom set up, take classes, and spend a lot of time reading and preparing for the next year (especially when you find out that all of a sudden you're teaching another grade or subject the next year and have to learn a whole new curriculum.)

Every job I have ever had in the private sector - including a technology company and on Capitol Hill - was significantly less stressful and less time consuming. Most professionals can take coffee breaks, bathroom breaks, and DCUM breaks whenever they want during the day. They can stop and talk to colleagues about work or your weekend or the news when you need a mental break. Teachers can't. When teachers need to take sick days, they have to spend hours writing lesson plans and creating activities for a person to do in their absence. None of that time is part of the built in "planning time" at school. There's no such thing as comp time or flex time.

I'm not complaining. I love my job. But I get furious when I hear people claim that we work 6.5 hour days and have all this time off. If FCPS teachers "worked to the rule" - that is, only worked their actual contract hours and did NO uncompensated work other than that - this entire system would grind to a complete halt. The school system DEPENDS on teachers planning and grading beyond contract hours and supervising clubs and extracurriculars and helping students after school and spending breaks and summers planning, preparing, and grading. So stop evaluating our compensation as if we were factory workers who got to leave when the whistle blows.

+1

The sad thing is some will see this as a complaint rather yah a refute of wrong impressions.

I think you make a good point. Teaching, and the prep that goes into it, is much different than what most adults know from their experiences in grade school growing up.

I grew up in a teaching household and so have an idea. Teachers have been very strong on advocating for better pay over the past 20 years. What they haven't been as great about is quantifying their working hours and advocating for reasonable weekly hours. This has been a problem for them nationwide not just within FCPS.

[Anonymous]

I get teachers have to do prep work but so does every other professional? It is not liked I walked into my new job and kicked backed and relaxed waiting for people to do stuff for me?

Fairfax should pay the teachers comparable to the surrounding counties but clearly they can't manage a budget and continue to make investments in programs and rearranging schedules over their employees.