Carroll County Public Schools Superintendent Cynthia McCabe explained to the Board of County Commissioners why teacher salaries are a budgetary priority for the school system, at a joint meeting with the school board this week.
“We can’t fill our teacher positions,” McCabe said, “so we have to do something about that now to plug the hole.”
The school system’s requested $460.2M fiscal 2025 budget asks for a $17.9 million increase in sustained funding from the county, but also requested $6.4 million less in one-time funding from the county, resulting in a net gain of $11.8 million in county funds above fiscal 2024 levels.
The $19.2 million budgeted for boosting employee salaries is the largest increase in the requested budget. The fiscal 2025 budget also represents an increase of $6.9 million in inflationary impacts, $4.6 million for technology, $2 million for special education, $700,000 in state Blueprint requirements and $400,000 for transportation.
“We’re not hiring well,” Assistant Superintendent of Operations Jon O’Neal said, “and we try not to highlight that publicly. We’ve tried to stay away from that publicly, but we’re walking around today and on any given day with teacher vacancies, which has never been a reality in Carroll County. That’s never been, until the pandemic, something we dealt with.”
Carroll teachers make about $9,000 less in annual salary than those in neighboring districts on average, McCabe said.
“Few people argue against the notion of giving our teachers a fair raise,” McCabe said, “but it’s the total cost of such raises that causes sticker shock for everybody, and I completely understand that.”
The increase to teacher salaries would allow the district to stay competitive in attracting the best-qualified teachers, McCabe said, by joining other school systems in setting a $60,000 salary minimum for teachers this year. That salary minimum must be in place by fiscal 2027, as required by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.
The Blueprint is a state law that fundamentally aims to send more resources to students who need them — such as those living in high concentrations of poverty. Blueprint’s many ambitious initiatives include universal prekindergarten for low-income families, improving career readiness for high school graduates, and shifting resources to better serve students eligible for compensatory education.
As a part of the Blueprint’s goal of hiring and retaining high-quality and diverse teachers, counties are required to implement a Blueprint-aligned career ladder this year.
“What we’ve decided to do that doesn’t have to be done by law next year, is get to the $60,000 starting salary, and have that salary schedule attached to the career ladder,” McCabe said, “because it’s very difficult to negotiate a career ladder with our association without looking at the salaries.”
The Carroll County Board of Education unanimously ratified an agreement with the Carroll County Education Association, which sets a $60,000 minimum salary for teachers, at the school board’s monthly meeting Wednesday evening.
“If the local funding authority does not allocate sufficient funding in the fiscal year 2025 budget to implement the new career ladder salary structure, the parties agree to reconvene negotiations on this article,” according to the agreement.
If funded, the new pay scale would help address the high rates of turnover and burnout among teachers, O’Neal said.
“Anything we can do to compete in the hiring realm, hopefully is getting us more, and more-prepared folks,” O’Neal said.
An large number of teachers have retired in recent years, O’Neal said, and mid-year retirements have become increasingly common. To bridge the gap, the system has relied increasingly on conditionally certified teachers, long-term substitutes, and hiring or rehiring retired teachers on a year-by-year basis. A conditionally certified teacher is typically a professional with a degree relevant to the subject taught, but not certified as an educator.
“We cannot continue to do that and keep our academic scores where they are,” Board of Education President Marsha Herbert said. “They need mentoring, they need a lot of professional development, and they’re not getting it.”
The system started the process several weeks ago of interviewing teacher candidates for next school year. McCabe said many candidates were offered an open contract, which constitutes an agreement to work for the system while allowing the superintendent to assign the teacher to the school where they are most needed.
“We’ve gotten very few people accept our open contract,” McCabe said, “and we’ve never been in that situation before. It’s not tenable for the future.”
The Blueprint will also require that Maryland teachers spend no more than 60% of their time on in-classroom education, with the remaining 40% to be dedicated to things like planning and professional development. McCabe said this will likely require the system to hire around 125 new teachers, contingent upon a yet-unclear understanding of what non-instructional activities will qualify to comprise at least 40% of a teacher’s time.
Teaching offers a work-life balance that is unappealing to many candidates, McCabe said, and education professionals now have access to ample remote positions, while teaching must be done in person. Teachers do not get the same level of respect as they did in the past, she added.
“I was a teacher,” Herbert said. “It’s not an easy job and it’s more difficult now. Especially since pandemic, it’s not easy.”
The school board’s student representative Sahithya Sudhakar said it seems like very few students are choosing a career in education today.
“Do we wish to remain a leader in the state as far as student outcomes, or not? What this budget really represents is an opportunity for us to position our teacher salaries in such a way that we can recruit and retain qualified professionals,” McCabe said, “after years and years of falling behind our surrounding districts… I implore you to support us, not just in being compliant with Blueprint because it’s the law, but because we do want to rightly serve the children in our county.”
Board members expressed their intention in January to continue quarterly joint meetings, which would make Wednesday’s meeting the second of four in 2024.
