Members of Howard County’s school board, county council, and state legislative delegation discussed legislative priorities in an online meeting Thursday.
During the meeting, attendees expressed concern over a shortage of 14 special education teachers, while the county’s superintendent noted the school system had solved its bussing problems.
“We started off the school year with over 400 individuals being hired by the Howard County Public School System,” said HCPSS Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano. “We have approximately 14 Special Education vacancies. That is still the most challenging area that we have.”
Martirano noted 19 general education positions also remained vacant with a critical need in the teaching of higher math. Seventeen paraeducator positions and 15 student assistant positions have gone unfilled.
Del. Jessica Feldmark expressed concern that those unmet education needs lead to classrooms of kids, who would otherwise have their own teachers, being distributed among existing classes. That would increase class sizes and stress teachers, which could lead to teacher retention problems, she said.
David Larner, who helps lead the school system’s human resources department, said that right now the empty vacancies were mostly being covered by long-term substitute teachers.
“Clearly long-term substitutes is not the same as a teacher obviously,” he said. “They need additional support. But most of these vacancies are covered by a teacher. We are not spreading students around to other classes.”
Larner said schools also now have permanent substitutes on hand who help deal with classes.
“The special education office is great about supplying additional support for those kids,” he said. “We want that number (of vacancies) to be zero. But also, with over 75 schools, (it’s) not a huge number either.”
But the special education challenge is not confined simply to a shortage of teachers. There has been an unexpected influx of special education students from outside Howard County that was not budgeted for this year, Martirano said.
“We are a wonderful destination for our students with special needs,” he said. “We have seen an increase in students coming from other school systems in other parts of the nation for services within our schools around the topic of special education. That is placing an additional pressure on our school system as we budget for those positions.”
He emphasized though that employment numbers at HCPSS are never static and there was always an ebb and flow to them. Martirano said he was optimistic that, with the third-highest starting salary for teachers in the state ($58,500), Howard County was positioning itself well to work on these needs.
HCPSS Director of Human Resources Nicole Carter said her department is initiating virtual recruiting events in order to help meet the special educator need. The department has also been sending out recruitment specialists to meet with new special education hires to see how best they can help them deal with a heavier workload.
“We are continuing our efforts to meet them, mentor them, give them attention as well as provide any resources they need in order for them to be successful,” she said.
The superintendent gave an update on where the school system was now in relation to the bussing fiasco that occurred on the first day of school. Back in September many drivers didn’t show up to work on the opening day of classes, driven routes were incorrectly followed, many kids couldn’t get to school, and there was general disarray in the transportation office.
“We have made considerable progress since the beginning of the school year,” he said. “We currently have 507 routes, and we have all of those bus routes covered by a bus driver leaving the lots on time. It was a big lift this year with the implementation of (new) school start times. Working with our (bus contractor) Zum, they have provided additional support for us. Every year…on average we’d have 85 to 90 bus driver vacancies. We have been able to solve that.”
By “adapt” you mean deny kids the services they are legally entitled to?? Because that’s what this school district is doing.