Investing in teachers

Board of Education candidates discuss strategies for keeping qualified teachers in Frederick County schools

Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006

New textbooks, the latest technology and a state-of-the art building are tools every school district would like to have to ensure the best education possible for its students.

But perhaps the one invaluable tool every school district searches for is the one thing that can turn old books, outdated computers and a school in need of repair into a quality learning environment: a quality teacher.

Each year, Frederick County joins other school districts across the nation in bidding farewell to some teachers while culling resumes and colleges for their replacements.

‘‘We have a very aggressive recruiting campaign,” said Paula Lawton, human resources director for county schools. ‘‘That hands-on, aggressive recruiting style has proven very successful for us.”

Besides a mentoring program for new teachers and opportunities for advancement, Lawton said one of the greatest recruitment tools and selling points to new county educators is tuition reimbursement for them to obtain their master’s degree at no cost. The system will pay for up to 36 hours of credit at $350 per credit hour at Hood College.

‘‘Frederick County is more generous [than other area districts],” she said. ‘‘We place a high value on professional development.”

Situated in a competitive market, vying for the same teachers as other counties as well as Washington D.C., Virginia and Pennsylvania, Frederick County does its best to find and keep qualified teachers.

School board past-president Bonnie M. Borsa said that she and her colleagues are working hard to deal with teacher recruitment and retention.

‘‘The best thing we can do is maintain competitive salaries,” she said, months after the seven-member board approved a $11.8 million salary resource pool to give all employees a raise in the current school year.

Borsa said, however, that keeping teachers in the classroom goes beyond the paycheck. She said that if re-elected, one of the areas she will focus on is reducing an educator’s workload.

‘‘They are overwhelmed by all they have to do and all the paperwork,” Borsa said. ‘‘I’d like to see them have more time to focus on kids in the classroom, so I’d like to look locally at what we ask of teachers and streamline what they need to do.”

One of her opponents in November, Leslie A. Mansfield, said that her focus would be on teachers leaving the district and getting a clearer picture of why they are doing so.

‘‘We need to look at those leaving and determine if it is for other opportunities,” she said. ‘‘It could be that they didn’t feel they had the support they needed or that teaching simply was not for them. We need to figure out specifically what is keeping teachers here ... and that is the key to retention.”

Making a more marketable teacher

Gary Brennan, president of the Frederick County Teacher’s Association, said that the tuition reimbursement program is great, but also has a flip side.

‘‘It helps attract teachers and is something Frederick County does better than others, but it does have the unintended consequence of making them more marketable to go somewhere else,” he said.

According to staffing reports from the school system’s human resources office, since January, there have been 154 resignations from teaching and support positions. Of those resignations, 23 indicated that they were taking a teaching job in another Maryland county, and 29 to take a position in another state or at a private school.

Of the 29 going to a school in another state, 22 former employees had five or less years of teaching in the county, as did 13 of the 23 taking a job in a neighboring county.

‘‘It hurts us,” Lawton said. ‘‘Every time there is an exodus of teachers, we’ve lost a trained educator and someone with the knowledge of our curriculum. It’s a void.”

Lawton said there is no stipulation for years of service after receipt of a master’s degree, and that the issue would be one discussed during teacher contract negotiations.

Brennan said that he would not say whether the union would agree or disagree with such a stipulation, but it would be something the group would discuss.

‘‘I can understand if you put the money out, you’d like some type of commitment [to stay for a set number of years afterwards], but I’d prefer rather than this hammer approach, a different one, like looking at competitive salaries ... to get them to stay.”

Borsa, a member of the board since 2002, said she would entertain a discussion of tying a stipulation to the master’s degree reimbursement, and agrees with Brennan that a big key is ‘‘creating job satisfaction.

‘‘We want to do this so they don’t want to leave,” she said. ‘‘That involves the work environment, competitive salaries and other factors.”

Mansfield said she supports putting a stipulation of requiring a teacher obtaining the master’s to remain in Frederick County, one she personally fulfilled in the Naval Academy.

‘‘There, if you left after two years, you paid back [the tuition],” she said. ‘‘There is a commitment on the part of both parties. If we were a county of unlimited resources and wealth, maybe we wouldn’t need to do this ... but I don’t think we are in that position.”