Contacts: Kristina Korona, TAAAC President, [email protected], 410-224-3330
Following Superintendent Dr. Bedell’s AACPS announcement of his operating budget proposal on Wednesday, December 18, 2024, Kristina Korona, president of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County, released the following statement:
“It is clear that Dr. Bedell’s proposed budget, which is a record increase of $94 million, reflects a commitment to ensuring our students and educators have the resources they deserve. We are happy to see increases in staffing that will make educator workloads more manageable. In particular, the additional staffing in special education is desperately needed right now. All school year, our special educators have been raising concerns about their struggles to keep up with the pressing demands of federal special education requirements and the difficulties of managing student behaviors especially in the elementary schools.
“We commend Dr. Bedell’s commitment to increase pay for lower-income employees. All educators–including our Education Support Professionals—deserve to make a living wage with just one job. As unit 1 employees, we understand the vital role that our support professionals play in improving our own working conditions, supporting the learning of our students, and making sure our schools are well-run.
“While we are glad to see a 3% COLA that keeps ahead of current inflation rates, we are concerned about the uncertain economic outlook in the coming year and more importantly the need to ensure that our veteran educators have the competitive salaries they deserve. It is disheartening that salaries of loyal AACPS educators continue to lag behind those of neighboring counties. While we value the efforts that have been made to ensure we can recruit new educators with competitive starting salaries, we expect similar efforts now be made to provide competitive salaries at the top of the scale as well in order to retain our most experienced educators. This is why TAAAC will be advocating for an even more robust salary increase in this year’s final budget request.
“Ultimately, we know that the approved Board of Education budget will need to be funded by the County Council. We look forward to making our case to the larger Anne Arundel community over the next few months about the needs of our school system and why moving AACPS from good to great will require increased revenue. We ask the families of our students as well as other community allies to show up in solidary at the upcoming budget town halls held by County Executive Pittman to advocate with us for the funding our school system needs to make the public education profession sustainable. This is how we will not only recruit but also retain enough educators to support the academic as well as social-emotional growth of every single one of our students.”
