David Stein: Teachers' Union Leader

What has been your primary focus as president of MCEA?

The primary focus is on securing school budgets. We are seriously under-resourced and underfunded as a school system. Our per-pupil expenditure has not returned to where it was before the recession of 2009. A primary job of mine as president is to work with the superintendent, the school board, the county executive, and the county council to really make some headway into getting the budget back to where we need it to be. We also made a lot of progress last year with the school district in trying to give teachers more autonomy over their time when they’re not teaching, allowing them to plan for their instruction.

What is a common misconception, if any, that you get about MCEA?

They think that since we’re the teachers’ union, we only represent teachers, and that’s false. Another misconception that you hear is that we are only interested in salaries. We are interested in salaries because that’s how you recruit and retain the high-quality teachers that we need in the district, but it is definitely not our only concern. Our concern is getting schools to the point where students and families have the resources they need to succeed. And since our members are the ones actually doing the work in classrooms and buildings, we teachers are really the experts. We’re the ones who know what needs to get done, and MCEA is about lifting up all those voices.

You made a statement against the proposed regional plan model. Could you elaborate on the issues with it and what you think would be a more effective way to ensure equity in magnet programs?

We have a disagreement with the superintendent over this issue. We all acknowledge that there's unequal and inadequate access to special programs around the county. Depending on where you live, you might have a lot of programs you can apply to, or you might have few programs you can apply to. That is a problem that needs to be addressed. The issue we have is the way the board has chosen to try to fix it, which is to create—all at once—six regions, each with five specialized programs. So that means building 30 programs around the county from scratch. You have to staff those programs, you have to figure out what the curricula are within those programs, you have to figure out what the progression is, and what it means to go from ninth grade to twelfth grade within those programs. Our contention is that if you try to do it at that scale, that quickly, you’ll end up with programs in name only. So you’ll end up with programs that they say, “Yes, we have a biomedical program at [this] high school, or we have a science and math technology program at this high school” and parents and communities will say, “Great, you’ve done it. You’ve created a program,” but if that program doesn’t have well-trained staff, or doesn’t have a cohesive curriculum framework, or doesn’t have a theory from ninth grade to 12th grade, it’s not really a program. We’re concerned that we’re headed in that direction.

What impact has the Mahmoud v. Taylor Court case decision had on teachers and classrooms?

I think that was a very unfortunate decision because it sends a message that certain people are not worthy of being heard from and not worthy of being acknowledged. When you say to a community, “Okay, you can opt out of books if they have characters in them that you don’t like or approve of, and your child doesn't need to be exposed to that,” to me, that’s the antithesis of what public education is supposed to be about. Public education is supposed to be about learning about the society we live in as it is. I was worried that we were going to have a deluge of opt-outs, and with so many people trying to opt out of so many books, that there would be an operational issue. We haven’t seen that many cases of opting out yet, but that doesn’t mean that’s gonna stay that way in the future ... [but] the philosophy of it is really deeply troubling to me.

What is your perspective on the growing use of AI in education? Where do you see it supporting teachers, and where do you see potential risks?

I don’t agree with just saying “We’re gonna ban it.” I think back to the early ‘90s, when I started as a math teacher and graphing calculators were first invented and promulgated in schools. A lot of math teachers at the time were saying, “This is going to ruin everything, it’s too much power for the students, and it’s going to keep them from learning.” But it changed the way that we talk, the way we teach math, and the way we think about functions. Now, if you look back, people would think, “Why were we so upset about it?” Now, AI is way more powerful than graphing calculators. But pretending like it isn’t there or banning it isn't the right solution. What we need to really do is think about how you can harness it to enhance, rather than substitute, for learning. That will require changing things—just like with the graphing calculators. I think that’s the kind of movement that we have to make to AI. We have to think about changing how we teach and how we assess. I know a lot of teachers are going back to in-class instead of at-home essay writing. I think it’s a question of harnessing the technology and being very thoughtful about how we change our instruction and assessment based on it.

What do you want your legacy as MCEA president to be?

I think I would like people to say that I was president during the most challenging time for public education in this country. And that we got through that time stronger, more together, and more focused on our mission: moving our students together and learning. I hope that we look back and say, “Despite all the challenges, we made progress.” If we can say that, then I can retire happily.

How has the dismantling of the Department of Education affected MCPS from your perspective?

It’s just starting to affect MCPS because a lot of it has been in litigation. The federal government is not a very high percentage of our budget, but the reality is, it is small, but it is directed towards our most vulnerable students. The money that comes from the federal government is almost exclusively going to students who are experiencing poverty, special education students, and students whose first language is not English. That means that things we are used to funding with federal grants now have to come from the budget we’re funding with local and state money, because we’re not going to abandon those students. Either we need to have our partners in the county and the state figure out where they're gonna get that money from, or we have to take it from something else. I think that is where we’re starting to see the effects. Beyond just the money, my whole lifetime, there has been an understood commitment from the federal government to use its funds to help school districts support their most vulnerable students. The fact that that commitment is now gone and the money has either disappeared or is on the verge of disappearing is really tragic. These people will not be in charge forever, and we will build back once they’re gone, but it’s gonna be hard. Once you take away stuff, it’s very hard to build that back up. I think they’re causing long-term damage to the way this country thinks about public education.

If MCPS was an ice cream flavor, what do you think it would be and why?

Rocky Road because everything we do is a challenge. It’s a challenge budget-wise because we don’t have as much money as we need to do what we need to do. It’s a challenge because our district is so large. We have almost 160,000 students. We have almost 30,000 employees. And so moving a ship that size is really, really hard. Even when everybody agrees that we need to change something, it’s hard to change it. We are making progress, but it is rocky.