Keller ISD is seeking to make alterations to the planning period under their status as a District of Innovation.
The purpose of the planning and preparation period is to allow flexibility in aspects of the local campuses, such as special days on campus, special time for collaboration and further, the ability for administrative flexibility based on the needs of students. Keller ISD’s status as DOI will take the control out of the states and allow each campus to regulate how they best see staff time used.
Further, Amanda Bigbee, Keller ISD general counsel or most commonly referred to as school’s attorney and also a facilitator in the DOI committee, said, “The way the policies written, there is some campus to campus discretion just as there was with the law as previously written. So now the campus administration can decide for each campus how they’re going to break those times up.”
With the flexibility given to the campus, there is a possibility planning could be reduced one week and made up the following week. However, Bigbee explains the consequences of abusing the planning time given to the staff.
“Usually if [the campus] is off schedule in some way subs have to be hired to make that time up. So if [the campus administration] dumped it all to a second week [the district] would end up having to pay for more subs, and campuses don’t have the money to do that,” said Bigbee. “So it’s not likely [the district] would run into that problem, but there is some campus discretion and how they schedule in that planning and prep time.”
The committee made it a point that the number of minutes that a teacher currently receives for planning and preparation must not be reduced, they however discussed the planning period of 900 minutes over a 20 day period. They further emphasized there will be a minimum increment of no less than 30 minutes per day. The recommendation is that the amount of planning and preparing time is to be consistent throughout the whole district.
“Planning period, bottom line is not being taken away or shortened in anyway, it just gives us a whole lot more flexibility for every campus to work with the teachers and the students. At [high school] level there is a little more of a range of flexibility, but when you’re looking at elementary, you’re looking at field trips, they don’t have the same type of scheduling that high school’s do, so it just allows for the teachers to have flexibility. But their planning period is not being shortened at all,” said Johania Nájera, Executive Director of Human Resources.
The policy has been written and the board has previewed the planning and preparation period in Feb. and will go into effect if the board adopts it in March.