From Ryan Burbey, President, Harford County Education Association:
On October 27th the HCEA Representative Assembly voted unanimously to present a specific list of budgetary recommendations to Superintendent Canavan. On November 21st, HCEA sent these recommendations to both Superintendent Canavan and all the members of the Harford County Board of Education. You can read the HCEA Budget Recommendations Letter here. After reviewing the Superintendent’s Proposed Budget, it is disappointing to see that these recommendations, which were crafted by teachers, were not given serious consideration.
We are hopeful that the Harford County Board of Education will act on these recommendations before submitting a budget to Harford County Executive Barry Glassman. We need community members to attend and speak on behalf of our teachers and students. Cutting valuable programs like swimming and Harford Glen is unacceptable.
It is important that the impending cuts come first from the administrative bureaucracy before teaching positions and programs are cut. HCEA has consistently advocated for the elimination of the instructional facilitator position and the reduction of central office administration. Community members must come forward to voice your support for cutting positions outside the classroom before cutting teaching positions and valuable programs. It is also important that the Harford County Board of Education hear voices speaking in favor of fully funding the 2 step and 2% pay plan for teachers both this year and next year. We must stop the flight of underpaid and over-worked teachers from our schools. If we do not return a sense of security, confidence and hope to our educators, we will continue to lose successful, experienced teachers to other counties. Amid a national teacher shortage, HCPS cannot afford to continue to lose 300 teachers each year.
Our teachers and students need you to speak out to make sure that the Harford County Board of Education creates a sustainable budget, which will provide funding for teachers’ salaries, favorable working conditions for teachers and productive learning conditions for students. Great public schools are the foundation of every successful community. Harford County Public Schools can be great again. We need you to Do Your Part by speaking out for our teachers and our students.
Make your voice heard.
Ryan Burbey
President-HCEA
I haven’t often agreed with you in the past, but things have really gotten out of control with the continuing erosion of quality in our school system. This county used to be proud of it’s school system. I know many people in the county who are embarrassed by the ongoing issues. We need to turn this around. I realize the previous county executive had a hand in the downward slide, but he is history as is the former governor. With a Harford County friendly governor and a supportive county executive, turning this system around should be already well underway. Why are we still going backwards? It’s time for all Harford County citizens to work together to right this ship and make Harford County proud again. I for one am willing to put aside past disagreements to get this done. I will be contacting my elected representatives and clearly vocalize my displeasure and urge cooperation to fix this now. It’s good for my business, and it’s good for Harford County
Please come out to the Harford County Board of Education Budget Meetings.
Ryan,
When I was recruited almost ten years ago, I left the private sector in hopes of a better career. At that time I took almost a 20 thousand dollar a year pay cut to help the students of harford county. Myself just like many others just can not live off of the poverty levels that the school system is paying. I have seen with my own eyes the total lack of accountability the fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayers dollars. The system has people in positions where they do absolutely nothing.
Speak out. Please come out to the Harford County Board of Education Budget Meetings.
I hear you Mr Groundsman, Just last Tuesday around lunch I was at the Redners in Hickory, There was a HCPS van in the parking lot with a newspaper covering the drivers side window and an occupant asleep in the drivers seat. It sat there for over 90 minutes.
Did you report it to the school system?
Newspaper taped up only on the driver’s side window and the driver sleeping?
So did you stand there for an hour and half, smiling, and gawking or did you spend an hour and a half at the grocery store, and walk up and gawk at the “HCPS Van” multiple times?
What are you trying imply, though? They were “milking the tax payer”? LOL
Did you take any pictures and upload them to your Facebook? Would love to see them.
Did you report it to the school system?
Why would I? Clearly it is acceptable behavior.
“Did you report it to the school system?
Why would I? Clearly it is acceptable behavior.”
But certainly worth complaining about on The Dagger, right? The effort you put into two Dagger posts could have easily been used for a phone call and cell phone pic…but why do that? If you reported it, something might actually be done about it. Then you’d have to find something else to grouse about.
In regards to IF’s, there will be an attempt to make them 10-month administrators. That won’t be much of a savings. In addition, have you noticed when cuts are made, positions are added. They call that budget neutral. It’s time to cut. in some supervisors’ offices, there is not consistency for staffing. Someone needs to point out all the people in some offices.
I agree there needs to be a plan to make all programs at all schools consistent. 2 world languages at one school should be the target. Develop a timeline so all students at all schools have the same opportunities.
Finally pay all staff a competitive salary, and make people feel as if you care about them by developing a positive workplace. If individual principals treated their staff the way that central office treat everyone, Harford County would be in worse shape than it is.
If the school board would do their job and redistrict the entire school system they could eliminate one, maybe two high schools and three or four elementary schools. No need for any new high schools with declining enrollments. The money saved could go to teacher salary’s.
Hey, Karma … Remember the boycott of Harford county on traveling to Baltimore City?..secret meetings…, and all the kids you’re ignored to promote your agendas . I could care less about your meetings.. Looks like audit season is kicking your ass,…..LoL
Off your meds?
PTSD?
Harford County under pays Deputies, Teachers, County Workers, and now they can’t afford swimming pools? WHERE IN THE HELL DOES ALL THE MONEY GO!!!!!
Well, at least you guys will have a well paid County Council and next State’s Attorney as well. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
I can agree that the teachers may be slightly underpaid, but to say that they are OVERWORKED? Seriously? No business in this country could thrive with the schedule of workforce that the teachers have. They hardly go two weeks without some sort of teacher meeting day, which is a non productive day. Day off or half day off due pending inclement weather, summer vacation, Christmas vacation, and many other days off that I missed. Be honest here, teaching is a very good job for the salary AND benefits that they receive. If a teacher feels like they are underpaid, then go get another job in the private sector where they will have to work hard every day. There are plenty of excellent, young, ambitious college graduates that would love the opportunity to land a teaching job in this county.
Has the husband of a Harford County I will say this, YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!!
Insert Teacher after Harford County. I was so mad I could not spell correctly
Unfortunately, your assessment of teaches’ workloads is woefully inaccurate. All of the in-service days are work days for teachers. It is true that teachers have holiday breaks “off” but many teachers feel compelled to work over holiday break planning or grading. Our teachers are contracted to work 190 days. Most teachers work far in excess of the 190 required days. Our teachers’ duty day is supposed to be restricted to 7.5 hours. However, most teachers work far in excess of this every single day. Unfortunately, HCPS has created many levels of bureaucracy, paperwork and over-testing, which burden our teachers with many hours of unnecessary work. In sum, yes, HCPS teachers are over-worked. Slightly underpaid does not accurately describe the problem either. HCPS teachers are among the lowest paid teachers in the state
Teaching is a very good job but it is not due to the salary and benefits. Teaching is a good job because the opportunity it presents to work with children and to benefit our society. Teachers nurture the next generation. It is a tremendous responsibility, which we all take very seriously. No one gets into teaching to get rich but we do expect our contract to be honored and to be treated like dedicated professionals.
Ok, I have several friends and relatives who are teachers that are usually home or home early on in service days. Who should I call to report that they are “overworked” on those days? Don’t get me wrong, there are well deserving teachers out there that are very much underpaid because they do an excellent job, go above and beyond, and would be sorely missed if they quit or retire. Due to the union, the good ones get paid the same as the ones who do the bare minimum or less. Like I said before, they do deserve some type of increase. It is up to you to find the money in the budget to pay for the raises. Maybe start trimming the fat in administration? Unnecessary spending in the operating budget? Oh wait a minute, we don’t trim fat, we ask for more money. That’s the way to run it like a business. Just demand more revenue instead of cutting costs.
For the work that they do, it is due to salary and benefits. How many applicants do you get for each teaching position that opens up? How many of those applicants have outstanding qualifications? If it was an underpaid and overworked job you wouldn’t get any applicants
The union has been advocating for HCPS to trim the fat for many years. Read our letter the superintendent. You should be asking how many of the most qualified applicants turn down offers from HCPS? How many leave after just one year due to poor working conditions and poor pay? What is the 5 year retention rate for teachers in high need areas?
Just because your teacher friends are home does not mean they are not working. teachers work from home to grade, plan, contact parents, etc. You might also note that teachers start early, thus they are home early. They are contracted for 7.5 hours each day. Everything in excess of 7.5 hours is unpaid. What other job entails the potential for unlimited, unpaid overtime? Most new teachers have no idea what actually working full-time in the classroom entails until they start teaching. Half on average leave the profession within five years.
Nearly every white collar job out there has a salary and unpaid overtime, teachers are far from unique in that aspect.
Don’t like it? Get an hourly job and punch a time clock.
Kharn,
After all these years of teacher bashing posts, you still have nothing of substance to contribute. At least you are consistent.
But HCPS did begin the school year without all teaching positions filled because there were not enough qualified applicants, so by your reasoning it is an underpaid and overworked profession.
During the school year, once teachers leave school which is not when the students leave, they are planning their next day. Then they go home to grade papers, fill out all the DATA the federal government makes them fill out.
Then some have to attend graduate school not because they want to BECAUSE they have to according to BOE. If they don’t have school, a lot of them are working part-time jobs because their salary doesn’t stretch far enough to pay their student loans and their on-going education, etc.
Summer time – a lot of teachers are in meetings planning for the next year or attending graduate school. I know several who work at student camps for the whole summer.
Doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc, all have to accumulate continuous learning credits to maintain their licenses.
Ah, but compare what we as a society are willing to pay doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. versus what we’re willing to pay our public school teachers.
Then, compare the percentage of each of those occupations’ salaries that is spent on mandated training.
@Locke,
Spot on! Furthermore, we as a collective, don’t blink an eye at what athletes get paid to play a friggin GAME, or what actors get paid to FAKE IT. Much like our government, we have gotten the society that we deserve as a populace. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done with respect to the quality of education in our schools. My kid is being taught literature by someone that can’t even construct well-formed sentences with proper grammar. SMFH.
My wife was a teacher many years ago and I can unequivocally say that she worked MANY more hours than for which she got paid. I can’t speak to the trends today, but it still appears to me that teaching is a thankless position. The difference now is that the quality of candidates is suffering due to the trend of “beating down” or “bashing” the teaching profession and coupling that with mediocre pay….and let’s not even talk about how some parents see teachers as nothing more than a day-care provider for their kids. It’s a real shame.
If these teachers are so smart, how come they didn’t research the requirements & compensation for their position prior to applying for it? It sounds like moving next to the airport & then complaining about the noise.
It really is impossible to research the requirements since workload is often dependent on the school, placement, and make-up of each class. All teachers know that they will have extra work. They are not looking to be martyrs. However, they do expect to be treated humanely, respectfully, professionally and to have their contract honored.
I’ve always believed that there is a portion of new hires who just take the job while they wait for a vacancy somewhere else not in HCPS to open up.
That leads me to wonder if the #1 pick who gets hired told the interviewers that they were just coming here with the intentions to leave as soon as possible?
Of course, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
HCPS could not fill all its’ teacher vacancies by the beginning of the school year and still has vacancies today.
“Director of Community Engagement, Equity and Cultural Proficiency”
Reminds me of that Hollywood film “Office Space” where the consultant”s ask “What do you say you do here all day?” and shrug.
Why does no one state the obvious? We need to (*gasp*) raise our taxes to allow our county to spend more money on education. If we want smart kids / workers / citizens, we need to put a bit more of our resources into the school. If we don’t want to raise taxes, we need to pull the money from somewhere else. Emergency Services? County Roads and Bridges? It’s got to come from somewhere, folks… No one likes additional taxes, but they are a shared burden that allow us all to move forward.
Lets start by closing the pools.
I’m lucky enough to be able to afford a membership in a private pool club close to my home so have never used the public pools. What don’t you like about the public pools? Are they falling apart and need serious money spent on repairs? How much money will that return to the school system? Will closing them have any adverse effects that would cost the county in other forms, such as increased delinquency?
While that sounds great enrollment is on the decline so why every year the budget goes up to while the quality of education for fewer children goes down?
I’m guessing here, not having looked at the budgets in any detail, but I’m going to say the budget goes up each year because of (but not limited to) increasing costs of healthcare, security costs, unfunded education mandates, technology costs, aging buildings, competition from neighboring school systems, etc. All these things are very real costs, and must be addressed.
Ageing buildings is an interesting subject. Why is it if a school is older than 30 years in Harford county it needs to be torn down and rebuilt? How is it Baltimore county manages to have solved this aging problem?
The answer is not the amount of money or even the number of children, it is the people who decide where the money goes. HCPS is a black hole that needs money to sustain itself, grow larger by the year and take no responsibility for the quality of education.
This is Harford County aka Little Kansas East. Any suggestion of raising revenue (we are not allowed to use the word “tax” under penalty of death unless the word “cut” is in the same sentence) even if the cost of which would be refraining from saying “please supersize that” at the window once a month is forbidden. Instead when we hear the phrase “tax cut”, we are conditioned to say – “thank you sir, and may we have another?” If we complain about any reduction in services we are thrown in a “reeducation camp”.
Please take a look at IF’s!! There are smaller schools in the county that do not have IF’s because of a mid-year shortage. They are doing just fine. The smaller schools do not need a full time AP and an IF. Another possibility is just have less of them. They don’t need to come every week to a school…maybe every 2 weeks. Stop increasing class sizes!! 30+kids in an elementary classroom is too many!! We do more for the kids than any IF could every do!!
For those of us not in the know (me!), what is an IF and an AP (Assistant Principal?) ?
IF is an instructional facilitator. It is a person assigned to one or more buildings who is suppose to assist newer or struggling teachers with designing instruction.
IFs used to be called supervisors. Their job really is to evaluate teachers; they really don’t facilitate instruction (as the title would lead one to believe). There really is little time for that part of the job. Most observe teachers, meet with them and share the evaluation and then work on writing it all up. They also do a lot of “work” for the principal. Many don’t do much with professional development.
I have taught in other schools with the same number of students who have one principal and one secretary (some have APs and some don’t). BUT I don’t think we need so many principals and secretaries in every school. Also, I think HCPS employs too many custodians. Same scenario from other schools where I taught. We could save lots of money by eliminating many of these positions… And then maybe there would be more money for teachers, students, and computers!
I assume Harford tech gets the shit end of the deal for trade teachers.
Let me be more specific, besides retired trade workers or someone coming in to add to their lengthy pension (is that even possible) somewhere else (?)
A younger person accepting to teach a trade until they get back on their feet and reintroduce back into the trade can just quit without doing it “proper” and thus not being “allowed (?)” to teach again, is that right? Teachers have to give a multiple month notice of quitting their job ahead to retain their “credentials”?
It wouldn’t matter for a trade teacher, since they probably aren’t going to come back to teach a trade in Public school again anyway.
Alex Spooner… Mike Ruppert, Don Osman, Janice Grant, Janice Ruckman, even David Craig… Hail to the our alma mater HdeG, excuse me The Great Jim Harris!, Thank you! For your undying love, beyond the classroom, Sincerely yours Poogie……….
I propose a child tax. If you want to have kids, you pay additional money for them to be educated in grade school… just like you will have to pay for them to attend college.
If you can’t afford shoes, coats, athletic fees, transportation, food, and school supplies for your kids then why in the hell should I be expected to foot bill to provide for your kids.
Why the hell should you be expected to foot the bill to educate other people’s kids? I’ll give you two of many reasons.
1- Every, literally EVERY study, has shown a clear connection between the perceived quality of a public school system and the value of homes in that school system. Whether you have kids or not, by having a home in a good school system, you reap the benefits in home equity. That, incidentally, is part of the reason schools are so often funded via property taxes.
2- There is also a clear link between education and crime. The better the education, the lower the crime rate.
There are quite a few other reasons, but these two are the most obvious. And this is coming from someone who now lives in a state with significantly higher property taxes than Maryland AND who does not have (and does not want to have) kids.
Good, you can pay for my doggie day care and my vet bills. I will tell you where to send the checks.
If your pet bills had a profound (ie: upwards of 20%) increase on the value of my home, I’d be fine with that. But I’m guessing from your attitude on here that your dog would just be tearing up your neighbor’s shrubs and having the opposite effect on property values.
Swing and a miss. Try again.
Property values won’t mean much in another 10 years.
There will be so many habitual drug users in every neighborhood.
Almost double the heroin deaths, and 86 more heroin ODs.
Do the math.
@proposal, Did you on anyone else in your family attend public schools? If so others paid for them to have the privilege.
I agree with Former HS Teacher. We also all pay taxes into a general county and state fund for things we don’t use. Under that logic, why should I pay for the county to plow the streets near your house or to repave the streets near your house every couple of years.
The cost to plow a street vs. educate a child isn’t even close. Having kids are a choice, you want them, you should pay for them.
I suppose you think your kids admission to disney world should be free too as long as I pay more for my ticket.
There is still a cost that I am paying when your street is plowed and it’s not cheap even if it is less than the schools. The cost cannot be downplayed. Somewhere whether its a park, highway, medicare, etc i am paying a cost for you i don’t use. Libertarianism doesn’t really work. I we follwed it we couldn’t even fund our military or pay to take care of our veterans.