With all of the hoopla over the county budget cuts, several teachers met with a large group of students during Highlander time today to discuss upcoming plans for the FCPS school budget.
In the meeting, teachers expressed serious concern for drastic budget cuts despite heightened expectations for time and performance. As a sign of the severity of the matter, a surprising amount of students attended the meeting.
At the meeting, students were told that because of low teacher salaries, it will be difficult to retain many of the teachers who make McLean the top school that it is:
“We will not have good people in front of you if we cannot pay them. They could quit today and go to Yorktown high school and get paid ten to twenty thousand more a year without even moving” school board member Janie Strauss said.
In addition to the ill effects posed to teachers, students, according to one McLean High School teachers, will also suffer:
“More assignments to grade, less time for 1 on 1s with students. This is where it will affect you. Courses, especially extracurricular classes like photography, could be combined-resulting in watered- down combined curriculums” Lori Wagoner said.
The message is therefore clear, the pairing of stagnant teacher salary and increasing work times because of after-school time is not sustainable:
” We had to cut 1450 positions. We’ve been lobbying to get a tax increase to get more money. We are going to have to cut positions. The question is how many positions will we have to cut 730-100 more positions to sustain having the best teachers in our classrooms” Janie Strauss said.
The problem, Strauss says, is a result of the politics associated with funding:
“We have got to have a little more money- but the state will not have a completed budget until June. We need to know by May. This is a highly political, highly charged topic. Unfortunately politically, people are putting a lot of the blame for the economy on public schools and teachers. A quality education is one of the most important things our government does” she said.
Students can help support the efforts to increase teacher salaries by spreading the word. Sending emails to the board of supervisors or posting on Twitter or Facebook, for instance, will be effective.
But even with increased backing of the teachers, the bottom-line is that we live in a low tax state and a low tax county, but have high expectations. In order to create a long term solution, schools need more money at both the state and federal levels. The counties surrounding Fairfax county are pursuing McLean’s teachers, and if they are lost, McLean’s academic quality is likely to suffer.
