Reply to Wash Post article on Montgomery County salaries

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I'm pretty sure it's only the ones that were eligible for the step increase during the year it was missed.  Also, I don't think it's 2 makeup step increases -- the other step increase is the normal step increase that folks would and should get during this fiscal year.  Basically, the fact that they missed step increases for a number of years (not sure how many) means that a teacher with X years on the job is making the same as a new hire.  Since we all know that teacher experience is really key -- and those first few years are like dog years -- it's really not fair that this isn't reflected in their pay.  The more senior teachers probably aren't even eligible for the step increase.   I just checked the salary scales online, and after 18 years, they aren't even eligible for regular step increases.  To get that $90K that a PP mentioned, you have to have a masters and have been working more than 16 years for the County.  The entry level folks are only making $48K -- and by "entry level" I mean all the folks that were hired since they stopped giving the annual step increases.

There is a ton of money wasted in this County.  I pay a ton of taxes, but the one thing I will not complain about paying taxes for is to pay a better than competitive wage to our teachers, police and firefighters.  I want the best of the best for those three.  (And if you think we're not already losing good teacher candidates to FCPS--as well as to counties where the cost of living is less, like AA and HC, you're wrong.)[/quote]

One issue that I have with the pay structure at MCPS is how the pay and raises is not performance based.  It's already been mentioned in this thread about how it's difficult to measure a teacher's performance.

However I don't think that it can just be generally applied that senior teachers or those that have more experience are more deserving than newer employees.

The culture at MCPS is similar to some other government organizations where there are those that just slide through doing the bare minimum.  When talking to some of these supervisors, they mentioned how they'd love to trim the fat that are the noncontributors but the culture and union regulations makes it very hard to do so.

The film/story Freedom Writers kind of reflect this even though it has the Hollywood spin and romanticizes it a little bit.  I'm sure a lot of teachers are great at what they do, but it's the one that just manages to slide by that causes the issues with the system.  Not only do they get rewarded for doing a bare minimum, as a previous poster commented the culture promotes mediocrity, it also discourages some of the ones that do put in the effort but don't get rewarded any differently for the extra effort they put in.  The general point though is that just because someone has been a teacher for a while, doesn't necessarily make them a good teacher.

In some workplaces the salary range is pretty much fixed and you only get a raise if you went above and beyond in the previous year.  Otherwise if you basically  just did the same thing year in and year out, you could pretty much just expect a COLA adjustment.  Then when you hit the ceiling of the salary range of your position, you either accepted the fact and settle in the position or you continue your career growth by pursuing a position that allows you advance your salary and skillsets.

With the way MCPS works, everyone gets the step increase regardless of performance and the top level of the salary range will always increase due to the COLA adjustments.  Several years ago the COLA increases were 4% alone some years and employees got the step increase on top of that.  Which as mentioned on this thread 4.5% is often considered generous  by itself.

Again there is the issue on how to measure teacher's performance but the current system involves a lot of waste and bloated budget.  Then on top of that there's that maintenance of effort rule where school systems have to maintain the same budget or higher as previous years, which makes it very hard to cut costs where it's needed to make things more efficient at MCPS.
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