Did you know that the ATF-APS “Living Contract” — the soaring, multi-page vision document for how the union and district will work together for a better tomorrow — lists five joint goals, and not one of them is about students?

Pour one out, New Mexico children, because the adults who run your school system have established a formal, written, collaboratively-negotiated framework for their relationship, and you did not make the cut.

Behold the five Living Contract goals, reproduced here in their full glory:

1. Maintain open lines of communication between the District and the Federation

2. Conduct ongoing negotiations as timely problem solving

3. View collective bargaining as collaboration

4. Provide flexibility in dealing with issues as they arise

5. Discuss future district initiatives that have a potential impact on educators’ work and workload

Incredible. Five goals. Zero children. A masterpiece.

Goal 5 is our personal favorite: “discuss future district initiatives that have a potential impact on educators’ work and workload.” Not educators’ students. Not educators’ effectiveness. The workload. The concern is the workload. This is a document about two institutions and their feelings about each other, and someone slipped it into a public school contract and called it educational governance.

Now to be scrupulously fair: the preamble! There is a preamble! The preamble says — and we quote — that “providing a high-quality education for the children of Albuquerque is the paramount objective of the District.” Wonderful. Outstanding. Framed and hung.

That sentence is the last time students appear as the purpose of any of this. The remaining 124 pages are about the adults.

New Mexico is 50th in education outcomes. The union’s framework for change features students once, in a preamble, legally unenforceable, sandwiched between two more important sections about the union.

It is called the Elementary Preparation Time Worksheet, and it is a genuine marvel of bureaucratic specificity in a document that contains no comparable specificity about children.

Here is what the contract is very, very clear about: elementary teachers get 220 minutes of prep time per week. In blocks of no less than 20 minutes. Distributed within 10 workdays of the school year starting. Schools must fill out and distribute the worksheet confirming the schedule. Federation Representatives get a copy. If a teacher receives even one fewer minute than 220, the district owes them money.

Two. Hundred. Twenty. Minutes. Per week. For preparation.

Here is what the contract is not clear about: literally any protected time for the child who is two grade levels behind in reading. No minimum minutes of intervention time. No enforceable schedule for academic support. No worksheet. No compensation. No consequences for a school that fails to provide it.

To be fair — and we are always fair here, at great personal cost — prep time matters! Teachers need to plan! We support planning! But when your 125-page contract contains a formal legal worksheet ensuring teachers get their prep minutes, and approximately nothing ensuring struggling students get support minutes, you have revealed your priorities with the clarity of a neon sign.

Eighty-seven percent of APS 8th graders cannot perform math at grade level. The contract knows, to the minute, how much preparation time their teachers need. It has never once asked how many minutes those students need to catch up.

The contract has a worksheet for adult prep time. Students get a prayer.

Gather ‘round, New Mexico parents, because we have some exciting news about the adults who are contractually responsible for your children’s futures!

The APS-ATF Negotiated Agreement — a document we will be discussing at length in this series, because God knows someone should read it — limits the teacher duty day to six and a half hours. Six. And. A. Half. Hours. That’s shorter than a flight to New York. It’s shorter than some people’s commutes. It is, to be precise, the amount of time the contract says the adults need to be present before they are legally entitled to go home.

Subscribe now

Now! Should a principal have the audacity to need more than that — because, say, 87% of their 8th graders can’t do grade-level math and perhaps some intervention time would be useful — the contract says the duty day can only be extended a maximum of two hours in any 20-day period. With 48 hours’ advance notice. In writing. Probably notarized, we assume, though we checked and it’s just the 48 hours. Small mercies.

Many APS teachers are hardworking, dedicated professionals who stay late all the time because they love their students. We know this. We salute them. This post is not about them. This post is about the fact that the contract treats their workplace like a factory floor with a whistle, and then everyone acts confused when the system can’t respond to kids who need more help than a 6.5-hour day allows.

The ATF will tell you this is about protecting teachers from overwork. Sure. And we’re sure that’s part of it. But here’s the thing about protection: it only works if you’re protecting the right thing. A shorter contractual day protects teacher time. It does precisely nothing for the kid sitting in the back row who still can’t read.

New Mexico is 50th in the nation in education outcomes. The contract says the people responsible for changing that can be home by 2:30. We’re fine. Everything is fine.