Enrollment goes up, Classroom teachers go down

In a previous post we noted that at the October 9, 2012, Board of Education meeting the Board would be buying some lucky administrator a new car.  We also noted that there would be no discussion of this purchase.  

There are a finite number of dollars in the MCPS budget and every budget decision is a choice.  In this case, the Board is choosing to buy a car rather than put money towards a classroom teacher.  The charts on this page show how those decisions look in the big picture.  As MCPS enrollment has increased (blue chart), regular instruction classroom teacher positions have declined (red chart).

Put another way, MCPS had fewer regular instruction teachers in 2011 than they did in 2006, yet enrollment has increased by 8,658.