Several teachers spoke of premature “burn-out,” and community support for teachers was evident, at this evening’s regular biweekly meeting of the Baltimore County Public Schools board.
BCPS Supt Darryl Williams at the board meeting (screenshot)Salary negotiations are ongoing between the board and teachers, but the volume of warnings at the meeting from teachers who feel burned out early in their careers may be a harbinger of a new era in teacher recruitment and retention.
“We need something to make this job competitive to deal with retention issues and staff vacancies if we are going to retain quality staff for our schools in the years moving forward,” WBAL-TV (NBC affiliate) quoted Lena Amick, a social studies teacher at Parkville High School, as saying. “We need to make this attractive to stay here.”
As work gets piled on for teachers in the county who do show up for work—to cover for long-term subs brought in so early in the school year, for teachers or subs who don’t show up, and so on—they say they’re working many more hours than they bargained for in their contracts.
“This is my dream job,” one teacher told the board, “and I don’t know if I’ll be back next year.”
All the educators urged the board to honor a request for salary increases in order to retain good, certified, highly qualified teachers. Teachers have the full support of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County, or TABCo, the teachers’ union.
One parent of a student at Catonsville High School, in the county’s southwest region, also spoke about school buses for high school kids that show up very late—or not at all. This, she said, creates a substantial hardship on families who must struggle to get their kids to school.
Whether or not qualified, certified teachers will greet them when they get there is a completely different question.
Baltimore County Public Schools serves about 111,000 students in 178 schools. In terms of student enrollment, it is the nation’s 26th-largest school district.
