From Harford County Public Schools:
The Board of Education of Harford County and the Harford County Education Association (HCEA), which represents approximately 3,200 Harford County Public Schools employees, including teachers, guidance counselors, psychologists, media specialists, occupational therapists, physical therapists and speech and hearing clinicians, have reached a tentative agreement between the two organizations.
On, Friday, January 14, 2011, the tentative agreement was signed by representatives of the school system and HCEA. The one?year tentative contract settlement between the two organizations encompasses the 2011-12 school year, which will begin July 1, 2011, and end June 30, 2012.
Specifics of the tentative agreement are currently being shared with members of the Board of Education of Harford County and with the members of HCEA. The agreement becomes official after ratification by both HCEA and the Board.
Information regarding the collective bargaining process can be found on the school system website at www.hcps.org by clicking on the ‘Board’ tab.
Wow, negotiations with the BOE begin in January. This seems unusual.
Negotiations began in January for the current school year’s contract, which we don’t have. That seems to be under reported. An agreement was reached sometime after this year started to temporarily extend the last contract until the BOE and HCEA could reach an agreement. It was during those negotiations when abrupt and expensive changes were made to our health care plans.
The most important part of this new deal are the step increases. These are essential in keeping talented younger teachers in the county. Teachers currently in their 3rd year, that have been granted tenure for successful observations and successful teaching, are making the same amount of money as a 1st year, unproven teacher often right out college. What incentive does that 3rd year teacher have to stick around Harford County when they can be paid more fairly elsewhere?
One of the areas that has not been addressed by the school administration is how are we going to pay for the proposed raises to teacher pay? What about paraprofessional positions, teacher aides, support staff and operational staff? Surely, these positions have not received their due compensation either.
The CE has already stated that the county does not have the funds and last year’s buy out from county employees went to increased funding for the school system to keep their salaries level to the previous year.
The county is projected to receive millions less in property tax receipts due to the lower assessments and the state continues to underfund the transportation share for the counties choosing to send 90% of it to Baltimore City. The county’s tax base has increased with BRAC, but not enough to offset the losses.
The county has also to find funding for correctional officers to staff the jail addition and more teachers are needed to staff the new elementary school. Amongst other pressing issues is the need for office space for county offices which currently are spread all over Bel Air and cost the county hundreds of thousands of $$$ every year.
The county executive has also said that county employees will probably not get a raise this year or next year…is share sacrifice a concept that the school system chooses to ignore or just that they feel that teachers are more deserving than county engineers, planners, attorney’s, water and sewer and sheriff’s office?
A lot of these pressing issues need to be resolved by carefull examination of how is the county spending our tax dollars and how to best acheive efficiency and maximize our shinking tax dollars as more taxes are clearly not the answer.
Roughly speaking the county sends 50% of tax receipts to the school system, 35% funds judicial and sheriff’s office and the county uses the remaining 15% or $15 of every $100 in tax receipts to fund all other county functions. Squeezing general county workers more will only yield minimal results to the taxpayer, so the answer seems to be that the school system needs to get its head out of the sand and look at their own expenses and determine the best course of action to meet the needs of the HCPS and its employees.
We as a county will not need many new teachers for the elementary school. Since the overall population of students is remaining the same and schools will experience a decline in enrollment, significant in some cases there will be teachers needing transfered to a different building. I suspect that will be most of them. The jobs the county will need more of are secretaries, custodians etc.
After Patterson Mill was built, they hired many more teachers. Even tough the county wide population didn’t change. Population between schools won’t change enough to have many teachers transfer. The BOE needs to examine how they do business and make some cut-backs. My assessment went down 17%, I’m not foolish enough to believe that my taxes will go down that much, but there will be a decline of income across the county. The standard operation practice for the schools is to ask for more and when they don’t get it threaten to cut teachers and increase class sizes. Central office never has to take a cut. When everyone else is cutting back, they should too.
A few differences. High Schools require more specialized teachers. There will be significant children moved. at YBES where the enrollment will drop by about 100 kids or 4-5 classes that is 4-5 teachers who will need to be reassigned. Prospect Mill will lose about 200 kids or 8-10 teachers. Emmorton will lose some as well. I am not saying we will not need to hire any but not a whole new staff just like Patterson Mill did not require a whole new staff either!
You’ll also have four new administrative salaries, and new teachers for the subjects that tend to have only 1 or 2 teachers in a building (art, languages, music, etc). It will likely be a significant amount of extra money.
It’s a shame money is so tight here in the county. But all the voters must have been very pleased they returned all if our local politicans for another 4 year term. So good or bad we have got to make the best of it and try to get things changed. Good luck with that!!!