How is FCPS teacher/staff shortage?

[Anonymous]

I heard that the best 2nd grade teacher at our school just got voluntold to move into a sped role. As a mom with a rising 2nd grader, I am really disappointed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard that the best 2nd grade teacher at our school just got voluntold to move into a sped role. As a mom with a rising 2nd grader, I am really disappointed.

The teacher will probably still be in the classroom, your students may still interact and learn from them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard that the best 2nd grade teacher at our school just got voluntold to move into a sped role. As a mom with a rising 2nd grader, I am really disappointed.

There's going to be a lot of "voluntold" situations in the next two weeks. It's extremely shortsighted of FCPS leadership as I believe that there will be another exodus next year and we will be right back here this time next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it true that high school teachers get a bonus if they have more than 150 students?

No

Yes, you do. Except PE teachers. It may have not been official until last year but there is a formula for a % bump for teaching above 150.

[Anonymous]

...if the students above 150 cause you to have a 6th period, then yes. But if you have 160 kids crammed into 5 periods, there is no bump

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard that the best 2nd grade teacher at our school just got voluntold to move into a sped role. As a mom with a rising 2nd grader, I am really disappointed.

There's going to be a lot of "voluntold" situations in the next two weeks. It's extremely shortsighted of FCPS leadership as I believe that there will be another exodus next year and we will be right back here this time next year.

Wait—shortsighted?? Please share your brilliant solutions to this national crisis. I’m all ears.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard that the best 2nd grade teacher at our school just got voluntold to move into a sped role. As a mom with a rising 2nd grader, I am really disappointed.

There's going to be a lot of "voluntold" situations in the next two weeks. It's extremely shortsighted of FCPS leadership as I believe that there will be another exodus next year and we will be right back here this time next year.

Wait—shortsighted?? Please share your brilliant solutions to this national crisis. I’m all ears.

Bonuses to go into needed positions would help. As much as no one wants to admit it, they are going to have to throw dollars at this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it true that high school teachers get a bonus if they have more than 150 students?

No

Yes, you do. Except PE teachers. It may have not been official until last year but there is a formula for a % bump for teaching above 150.

Correct. The state SOQ says that PE teachers can have up to 40 students per section. I believe that FCPS tries to keep that cap lower, but I don't know how successful individual schools are with accomplishing that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers want a 4 day workweek?! They already have summer off, winter break, spring break and tons of holidays. Most people work all week and all year. And they want students to have online learning one day a week?!

We need to get teachers from other countries like some districts have done. They are willing to work.

Teacher here. I don’t want a 4 day work week.

I want the following:

1) A salary that I can afford to live in this area.
2) Class Sizes not to exceed 24 kids.
3) Get rid of mandated CLTS and let the team and individual teachers plan how they want without being micromanaged.
4) Less useless professional development. We need more individual choice.
5) Better maternity leave policies
6) Better ESOL/Sped support in ES
7) Actual consequences for kids who misbehave
8) Parent follow through

Most teachers want reasonable things.

I want those things too. If i can’t have them, I will take the 4 day work week.

What grade do you you teach? I’m an ES teacher and I know it wouldn’t end up being a 4 day work week. I’d spend Monday (assuming it’s not time spent in meetings), planning for reading workshop, reading small groups, math workshop and small groups, remediation block, writing workshop, science and SS. I could also use the time for grading and any other number of administrative tasks. Then later on the week I’d probably be tweaking everything anyhow because by Tuesday the plans would be “off” and would have to be adjusted. Would we have no planning blocks T-F? A lot of science lessons are tough to teach if you don’t have a prior planning period to prepare the materials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent, it makes more sense to do conferences more into the school year, so there is student progress and performance to discuss. What is there to be said before the year starts? Please don't stick them on the laptops all year?

Not if it’s HS/ MS

I’m the ES teacher who posted about the conferences. These are introductory, welcome conferences.

They won’t be on laptops all year. Most won’t even be on them daily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard that the best 2nd grade teacher at our school just got voluntold to move into a sped role. As a mom with a rising 2nd grader, I am really disappointed.

There's going to be a lot of "voluntold" situations in the next two weeks. It's extremely shortsighted of FCPS leadership as I believe that there will be another exodus next year and we will be right back here this time next year.

Wait—shortsighted?? Please share your brilliant solutions to this national crisis. I’m all ears.

Bonuses to go into needed positions would help. As much as no one wants to admit it, they are going to have to throw dollars at this.

Exactly. They also need to get real about raising support staff pay. A para with 20 years in the county who spends most of the day managing challenging behaviors and pulling small groups of the neediest students to teach them to read and do math shouldn't be making $40k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:...if the students above 150 cause you to have a 6th period, then yes. But if you have 160 kids crammed into 5 periods, there is no bump

No, it's 150 across your 5 classes. It does not include any advisory group. If your total class load is over 150, there is a stipend you are paid. It is less than an AT contract and goes up in units of 10.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. Never heard of that and I'm going on 17 years here

[Anonymous]

It's really bad across the board.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/03/school-teacher-shortage/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's really bad across the board.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/03/school-teacher-shortage/

They need to increase teacher pay drastically. Like at least +$20k a year across the board on all pay scales.