How is FCPS teacher/staff shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

In my opinion there should be a cap of 25 kids per classroom. Any additional child above that the teacher should get an additional $250-500 added to their salary. It is completely unfair that teachers with 20 students get paid the same amount as teachers with 29-30 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

In my opinion there should be a cap of 25 kids per classroom. Any additional child above that the teacher should get an additional $250-500 added to their salary. It is completely unfair that teachers with 20 students get paid the same amount as teachers with 29-30 students.

You are quoting me. Forgot the extra money. I just don’t want to be pulled during my limited planning or lunch to cover someone else or continue to have to plan for classes where they never hired a teacher. I agree with the other poster that they should reassign all instructional coaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

I don’t get this. We have had Democrats in charge of everything and they claim to prioritize public education, but FCPS is in a total shambles.

Maybe they could have spent more time focusing on classroom sizes, teacher recruitment and retention, and facilities, and less time over the past few years obsessing about TJ admissions, a useless new Lewis Academy program, revisions to the SR&R, and other equity initiatives that, it turns out, don’t really make people salivate at the thought of working for FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

In my opinion there should be a cap of 25 kids per classroom. Any additional child above that the teacher should get an additional $250-500 added to their salary. It is completely unfair that teachers with 20 students get paid the same amount as teachers with 29-30 students.

You are quoting me. Forgot the extra money. I just don’t want to be pulled during my limited planning or lunch to cover someone else or continue to have to plan for classes where they never hired a teacher. I agree with the other poster that they should reassign all instructional coaches.

Yes, and give some of the Gatehouse employees the option to return to the classroom or lose their cushy jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

In my opinion there should be a cap of 25 kids per classroom. Any additional child above that the teacher should get an additional $250-500 added to their salary. It is completely unfair that teachers with 20 students get paid the same amount as teachers with 29-30 students.

If we cap class sizes then we might have to hire more teachers and fewer APs, instructional coaches and central-office resource teachers- can’t have that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

I don’t get this. We have had Democrats in charge of everything and they claim to prioritize public education, but FCPS is in a total shambles.

Maybe they could have spent more time focusing on classroom sizes, teacher recruitment and retention, and facilities, and less time over the past few years obsessing about TJ admissions, a useless new Lewis Academy program, revisions to the SR&R, and other equity initiatives that, it turns out, don’t really make people salivate at the thought of working for FCPS.

What sort of nonsense is this? Has the separation of the school forums given you myopathy? Or do you just love to hate on FCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

In my opinion there should be a cap of 25 kids per classroom. Any additional child above that the teacher should get an additional $250-500 added to their salary. It is completely unfair that teachers with 20 students get paid the same amount as teachers with 29-30 students.

You are quoting me. Forgot the extra money. I just don’t want to be pulled during my limited planning or lunch to cover someone else or continue to have to plan for classes where they never hired a teacher. I agree with the other poster that they should reassign all instructional coaches.

Agree. I dont want the extra $$ (although I understand I say this coming from a place of privilege as my DH is a high earner). I want to be able to do my job effectively. I need planning time and a reasonable class size to do that. I can’t spend my planning subbing or pulling together plans for a class I’m not teaching and still be in a good place to think about my own class planning and grading. There were weeks last year where I ended up with no planning periods. Put all of the instructional coaches and random “resource teachers” without classes assigned to them/not pulling small groups. While the instructional coaches are helpful, we need students to have teachers more than we need data crunchers right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

This is why the county should reassign instructional coaches to classrooms.

+1

As far as capping classes at the suggested 25, that sounds good, but I think we would then need to create more classroom space. A few years ago I was teaching an ES grade and every class hit 30 students. I believe at that point it was October. I had 31 students. We qualified for another teacher but we were told HR had nobody to send to is so we were assigned an IA instead. That teacher and the new class would have needed a room and we already have one entire grade level in trailers.

[Anonymous]

Every single school district has this problem right now. The number one focus should be utilizing our resources to get kids certified classroom teachers. That is 100 teachers right there. If they also got rid of resource teachers that could be an additional 200 teachers.

[Anonymous]

I just went into MyPDE and counted 19 online trainings that have to be completed by Sept. 30 and 1 that has to be done by Sept. 1. I thought, "This can't be right", but it looks that way.

I thought it was more like 10 or 11 trainings. Ugh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every single school district has this problem right now. The number one focus should be utilizing our resources to get kids certified classroom teachers. That is 100 teachers right there. If they also got rid of resource teachers that could be an additional 200 teachers.

I'm confused. That's 100 teachers right where?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just went into MyPDE and counted 19 online trainings that have to be completed by Sept. 30 and 1 that has to be done by Sept. 1. I thought, "This can't be right", but it looks that way.

I thought it was more like 10 or 11 trainings. Ugh.

A bunch of them take less than 5 minutes. Teachers have August 12 as a work in an alternate location day. The trainings can be done then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every single school district has this problem right now. The number one focus should be utilizing our resources to get kids certified classroom teachers. That is 100 teachers right there. If they also got rid of resource teachers that could be an additional 200 teachers.

I'm confused. That's 100 teachers right where?

By pulling instructional coaches back to the classroom, I think. Although there are more than 100. Most schools in FCPS now have one. Some even have multiple. Principals love them, but many teachers see them as data crunchers/principal lackeys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just went into MyPDE and counted 19 online trainings that have to be completed by Sept. 30 and 1 that has to be done by Sept. 1. I thought, "This can't be right", but it looks that way.

I thought it was more like 10 or 11 trainings. Ugh.

A bunch of them take less than 5 minutes. Teachers have August 12 as a work in an alternate location day. The trainings can be done then.

Make sure you only are looking at those that are not listed as attended. Many only have to be completed once—you may have completed in a past year and satisfied the requirement. I knocked mine out in about 2 hours. Some of the longer trainings have pre-tests that allow you to test out this year, which I appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t fit 45 in a classroom. Class sizes will stay as they are, which will be over 30 as the norm in all grade levels. Positions that aren’t filled will have day to day subs. When they aren’t picked up, current school staff will juggle to provide coverage for the day. Coverage, not teaching. More resignations will happen next year because everyone will be more overworked.

You can’t force people to apply to be teachers if they don’t want to. Apply to be a sub if you want to do something to help.

I don’t get this. We have had Democrats in charge of everything and they claim to prioritize public education, but FCPS is in a total shambles.

Maybe they could have spent more time focusing on classroom sizes, teacher recruitment and retention, and facilities, and less time over the past few years obsessing about TJ admissions, a useless new Lewis Academy program, revisions to the SR&R, and other equity initiatives that, it turns out, don’t really make people salivate at the thought of working for FCPS.

What sort of nonsense is this? Has the separation of the school forums given you myopathy? Or do you just love to hate on FCPS?

To the contrary, it pains many of us to see what a mess FCPS has become.