Anonymous wrote:You can't cry bloody murder over $60 million and say $5 million is "nominal".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:40,000,000 divided by 26,000 employees works out to around $1600 per employee as an average.

My best guess is that MCPS will muddle through it and then fight tooth and nail against pay increases for teachers. I got tired of teaching in FCPS,MD watching us get a pay increase but then also having our share of insurance go up and cancel out any take home salary increase. It sucked and was demoralizing for newer staff who can barely make it in any school system due to low pay and poor support.

Adjusted for inflation pay at each step goes down every year. Hard to recommend teaching for college graduates based on the economics of this area and college costs now.

Teachers get paid salaries competitive with nurses, mid-level health care providers, and most public sector jobs.

By and large, the problem isn't pay- it is workload.

Most of those jobs get overtime pay.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The cost share for health insurance in MCPS is already very generous. The $40 million they want to supplement it with makes that cost share even more generous.

The reality is that things cost money. Inflation affects everyone. Rising healthcare costs affect everyone. The pool of money to pay for these things is not growing very much. This whole situation with the $40 million ANNUAL deficit in the health insurance fund is a massive screw up on MCPS's part and is a huge part of why we can't have nice things. Also see McKnight's (and probably Biedelman's) payout, legal fees, and the loss of Title 1 funding for some of the neediest schools

And maintaining pandemic era programs without pandemic era funding, like VA.

The mva costs are nominal. Stop being petty.

$5 million here, $5 million there, pretty soon you're talking real money!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:40,000,000 divided by 26,000 employees works out to around $1600 per employee as an average.

My best guess is that MCPS will muddle through it and then fight tooth and nail against pay increases for teachers. I got tired of teaching in FCPS,MD watching us get a pay increase but then also having our share of insurance go up and cancel out any take home salary increase. It sucked and was demoralizing for newer staff who can barely make it in any school system due to low pay and poor support.

Adjusted for inflation pay at each step goes down every year. Hard to recommend teaching for college graduates based on the economics of this area and college costs now.

Teachers get paid salaries competitive with nurses, mid-level health care providers, and most public sector jobs.

By and large, the problem isn't pay- it is workload.

Most of those jobs get overtime pay.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The pension issue is a complicated one and it is controlled by the state not the county. After 2011 the state pushed more of the pension costs to the counties.

The county got rid of pensions at least 25 years ago. They should be consistent as Mcps is part of the county. The county and MCPS cannot afford the pension system for MCPS. While its a great perk, its not realistic but there are many places MCPS can cut.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:40,000,000 divided by 26,000 employees works out to around $1600 per employee as an average.

My best guess is that MCPS will muddle through it and then fight tooth and nail against pay increases for teachers. I got tired of teaching in FCPS,MD watching us get a pay increase but then also having our share of insurance go up and cancel out any take home salary increase. It sucked and was demoralizing for newer staff who can barely make it in any school system due to low pay and poor support.

Adjusted for inflation pay at each step goes down every year. Hard to recommend teaching for college graduates based on the economics of this area and college costs now.

Teachers get paid salaries competitive with nurses, mid-level health care providers, and most public sector jobs.

By and large, the problem isn't pay- it is workload.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The cost share for health insurance in MCPS is already very generous. The $40 million they want to supplement it with makes that cost share even more generous.

The reality is that things cost money. Inflation affects everyone. Rising healthcare costs affect everyone. The pool of money to pay for these things is not growing very much. This whole situation with the $40 million ANNUAL deficit in the health insurance fund is a massive screw up on MCPS's part and is a huge part of why we can't have nice things. Also see McKnight's (and probably Biedelman's) payout, legal fees, and the loss of Title 1 funding for some of the neediest schools

And maintaining pandemic era programs without pandemic era funding, like VA.

The mva costs are nominal. Stop being petty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The cost share for health insurance in MCPS is already very generous. The $40 million they want to supplement it with makes that cost share even more generous.

The reality is that things cost money. Inflation affects everyone. Rising healthcare costs affect everyone. The pool of money to pay for these things is not growing very much. This whole situation with the $40 million ANNUAL deficit in the health insurance fund is a massive screw up on MCPS's part and is a huge part of why we can't have nice things. Also see McKnight's (and probably Biedelman's) payout, legal fees, and the loss of Title 1 funding for some of the neediest schools

And maintaining pandemic era programs without pandemic era funding, like VA.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:40,000,000 divided by 26,000 employees works out to around $1600 per employee as an average.

My best guess is that MCPS will muddle through it and then fight tooth and nail against pay increases for teachers. I got tired of teaching in FCPS,MD watching us get a pay increase but then also having our share of insurance go up and cancel out any take home salary increase. It sucked and was demoralizing for newer staff who can barely make it in any school system due to low pay and poor support.

Adjusted for inflation pay at each step goes down every year. Hard to recommend teaching for college graduates based on the economics of this area and college costs now.

Teachers get paid salaries competitive with nurses, mid-level health care providers, and most public sector jobs.

By and large, the problem isn't pay- it is workload.

Anonymous wrote:The cost share for health insurance in MCPS is already very generous. The $40 million they want to supplement it with makes that cost share even more generous.

The reality is that things cost money. Inflation affects everyone. Rising healthcare costs affect everyone. The pool of money to pay for these things is not growing very much. This whole situation with the $40 million ANNUAL deficit in the health insurance fund is a massive screw up on MCPS's part and is a huge part of why we can't have nice things. Also see McKnight's (and probably Biedelman's) payout, legal fees, and the loss of Title 1 funding for some of the neediest schools

Anonymous wrote:40,000,000 divided by 26,000 employees works out to around $1600 per employee as an average.

My best guess is that MCPS will muddle through it and then fight tooth and nail against pay increases for teachers. I got tired of teaching in FCPS,MD watching us get a pay increase but then also having our share of insurance go up and cancel out any take home salary increase. It sucked and was demoralizing for newer staff who can barely make it in any school system due to low pay and poor support.

Adjusted for inflation pay at each step goes down every year. Hard to recommend teaching for college graduates based on the economics of this area and college costs now.

Anonymous wrote:Good luck with the teacher shortage.
Teaching these days sucks due to no accountability for kids and parents and no attendance rules. If you remove or weaken benefits, I imagine even less people will be attracted to teaching. Especially since teaching is 100% in person while many jobs have switched to 80-100% remote.

Last year, my kid had a terrible long term sub for the full year for physics because the school could not find a physics teacher even though they had been looking all through the summer months. It was a completely wasted year for my kid in science class. We need to figure out how to attract more teachers to the profession