Superintendent Charles I. Ecker responded yesterday to teachers' complaints about working conditions in Carroll County public schools by promising to hire more technicians to maintain school computers, meet every three months with teachers and develop a long-range plan for writing and changing the curriculum.

Reacting to a list of concerns generated during a nearly 3-month-old work-to-rule job action by teachers at a dozen county schools, the schools chief stressed that the 15 pages he e-mailed yesterday to the school district's 2,800 employees "are only words" and that "actions will dictate our success."

"Without a commitment from all members of the school community to work together, these efforts will be in vain," Ecker wrote.

He warned that many improvements require money that the school district likely won't get this year in state and county budgets.

"We will continue to have funding challenges as the state and county officials work through budget deficits and our county continues to grow," he wrote. "Be assured that there is belt-tightening in our future. Long-term goals are always accomplished by persistence and patience."

The superintendent released the response 2 1/2 weeks after a task force of teachers and administrators offered 47 recommendations to address teachers' complaints about pay and workload in the wake of the job action.

Some teachers at a dozen county schools have chosen to work more closely to the terms of their contracts and boycott extracurricular activities for which they are not paid.

Ecker said that his formal response does not signal the end of his involvement addressing issues that prompted the job protest.

"We're going to try to work together with them and work together with the task force committee and resolve some issues," he said yesterday in an interview.

"Hopefully, this will be instrumental in stopping work to rule, but it may not. I don't know. I think it's a step that shows we're trying to work with them, we're trying to do things."

Teachers union President Cindy Wheeler said she's uncertain whether Ecker's report will be enough to end the job action. Union representatives will discuss the matter at their monthly meeting tomorrow.

"I have a real concern that there won't be enough money to do all these things, as is always the case," she said.

"I'm anxious to get feedback from some of our teachers. As one teacher told me tonight, he's looking for something that will make his job easier, that will take something off his plate. If he doesn't see it in the report, he'll continue to work to contract."

The 10 teachers and four administrators appointed last month to the task force suggested ways to improve the day-to-day job of a classroom teacher - a profession that teachers say has grown increasingly complicated and demanding as local school districts and state and federal governments have added requirements, responsibilities and assessments.

The panel offered concrete suggestions such as reducing the number of county-required exams given to students and allotting enough time within the school day for teachers to complete report cards and interim reports. It advised hiring more technicians to repair computers more quickly than the current one- to two-month waiting period.

The panel also recommended long-term solutions that tended to be less tangible and more expensive, including hiring clerical assistants for each grade level at each school (181 people), increasing "public support" for teachers, and not settling for the school district's current rank as 24th among the state's 24 school districts in staff-to-student ratio.

In responding point by point to the task force's report, Ecker documented the school system's practices for each concern before suggesting "future action" or changes.

The task force suggested more aggressive tactics to recruit and retain teachers and administrators.

In response, Ecker described the state's teacher shortage - Maryland school systems hired 7,649 teachers during the past year while the state's colleges and universities graduated 1,896 teacher candidates - and listed the 69 recruiting stops tentatively scheduled for his staff this year.

Ecker also indicated that he will ask the system's human resources department to make several changes, from acquiring federal grants to increase the number of recruiting trips to updating recruiting materials "to communicate the advantages of working and living in Carroll County to a broader audience."

Other concerns were characterized in the superintendent's report as unavoidable.

Among them was the task force's suggestion that Ecker avoid cutting principals' budgets during the school year when "it could have a negative effect on student progress."

"Unexpected costs that occur in one area of the budget must be paid by reducing another," Ecker wrote.

He explained that when skyrocketing health care and prescription costs and special-education expenses forced him to cut $2 million during the last school year, he turned to the only pot of money beyond salaries and benefits that the school system maintains.

He slashed the administrative staff's budget for hourly employment and equipment by 50 percent and cut schools' money from the same category by 30 percent.

"I will not eliminate or furlough our staff to save money for supplies and materials," Ecker wrote. "It is my belief that people are more important than things, both in education and in life."

He conceded during an interview that yesterday's response is unlikely to satisfy teachers looking for him to simplify their jobs.

"We're in the process of trying to clear the plate of teachers and administrators," Ecker said. "That has not happened yet."