The Smart Ones Will Leave

Interesting posting to the Education Matters blog on the Bethesda magazine website. We wonder what the County Council would say in response?
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The Smart Ones Will Leave

By Julie Rasicot
Jun 3, 2011 - 10:18 AM

“The smart ones will leave. They already are.”

That was the answer when I asked a friend, a veteran educator in the Montgomery County Public Schools, how the recent budget cuts are affecting her high school in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster.

Bad economic times have forced county officials to cut budgets across the board for fiscal 2012 and they made sure that MCPS shouldered its share of the burden. On May 26, the County Council finalized county spending for next year, reducing County Executive Ike Leggett’s proposed school spending by $45 million and the school board’s request by $127 million.

The fallout has begun: The loss of expected salary increases, higher benefits costs plus anticipated student loads of 160 or more students next year are forcing some of our best teachers to consider leaving the classroom for good.

“The weak teachers aren’t going to leave. The smart people are going to leave because they can do other things,” my friend said. “We’re not losing the slackers.”

At least one teacher she knows has already accepted a job at a local private school. Even though private schools traditionally pay less than MCPS, the budget cuts mean that this teacher will now take home about the same salary at her new school—and her child can attend for free.

Another teacher has decided to give up coaching his school’s sports teams because he can make better money bartending, she said. Meanwhile, other teachers are scrambling to pick up stipends for after school activities.

Yet another teacher, highly acclaimed for his teaching of math, is seriously considering finding another job. The thought of trying to be an effective teacher with a student load next year of possibly as many as 175 students—plus the class prep, planning and grading for those students—may push him out the door.

“Think about talking to 175 students every day,” she said.

And my friend?

Over the past three years, she’s lost nearly $30,000 in anticipated salary increases—money that she’d planned on when deciding to make major expenditures, like buying a new furnace for her house. Eighteen years with MCPS and she recently began looking for waitressing jobs to make ends meet.

Take the loss of good, dedicated teachers and combine it with the cuts in staff who deal with at-risk kids—14 academic intervention teachers and eight reading recovery teachers across MCPS, for example—and what happens?

The students from educated families with financial means may not suffer so much because their families can afford to supplement what may be lost in the classroom. But how about the kids on the lower economic spectrum? If we lose good teachers, who will help them?

Even though the school board voted to maintain class sizes in next year’s budget, scheduling issues mean some classes will be larger.

“You can’t schedule that everybody has classes at 32 students. We have more classes and more kids, more needy kids. The economy has changed,” my friend explains.

“People don’t understand the impact of what will happen if you don’t have good teachers. How do we make them understand that?”