BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md — After two years of negotiating educators in Baltimore County Schools are finally getting a salary increase thanks to a vote at the school board meeting Tuesday night. but there's another change within that vote that educators in the county did not expect.
“The board of education voted to approve an amended $2.495 billion fiscal year 2027 operating budget request,” says Dr. Myriam Rogers, Superintendent BCPS.
The $2.4 billion budget includes pay raises and expanded benefits for 20,000 union employees which costs the school system around $93 million.
Baltimore County teachers get a raise while the county is forced to lay off 600 employees
After 2 years of negotiating and fighting for wage increases, Kelly Olds, President of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County or TABCO, says they are partially satisfied.
“We really appreciate that those negotiated agreements are honored in the budget, it comes at a pretty significant staffing reduction,” she says.
The reduction also part of the vote, will eliminate nearly 600 employee positions in the school system one that is already short of teachers.
To offset the staffing cuts, the proposed budget also allows for class sizes to increase to 25 students for first grade and up.
“That is going to have a negative impact on a lot of things that are good for our kids, with that number of cuts, if that is what happens, we will see increased class sizes," said Olds.
Olds says not all of the cuts are a result of the budget.
"111 of the positions are attributed to a decrease in student enrollment which still leaves about 485 positions, many of which are attributed to the staffing allocation," she said.
Regardless, the increased class sizes will put an additional strain on teachers in the classroom.
“Being able to support the students in the classroom is difficult. The more students that are added to that its really hard to do small groups to be able to give one on one time to students who need that or when students need that and really just being able to support the students who are in their classrooms in the way that they need to be supported,” says Olds.
Olds says there are other benefits to the proposed budget, the salary changes makes Baltimore County Schools more competitive for retaining new teachers in the state.
“Prior to us starting to work on the salary scale, in lifetime earnings we were 11th out of 11 largest districts in the state. So this definitely moves us up from that so that is an improvement," said Olds.
But she says there is still a lot of work, and she is optimistic the county will have additional support for the school system, which Superintendent Rogers also alluded to as well.
“The county executive has expressed her desire to provide additional resources to the system despite the fiscal challenges at the state and local levels," Dr. Rogers said.
The board's budget request will now be sent to County Executive Kathy Klausmeier and the Baltimore County Council for consideration and approval.
