Did You Know the Contract Guarantees More Protected Time for Teacher Prep Than for Student Learning?

Did you know there is a legally enforceable worksheet — embedded directly in the APS-ATF contract — for tracking teacher prep minutes, and absolutely nothing equivalent for tracking whether students a

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.