Four hours a day; how teacher contracts are shaping remote learning
Photo: NCTQ April Report
A handful of district agreements illustrate how teachers’ hours and duties are shaped by district remote learning programs.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has put a magnifying glass on issues such as the digital divide and the challenges of remote learning, the crisis has also tasked teachers with learning new methods of teaching and following a different set of work rules governing pay, hours, and required duties.
“The first priority for most school districts has been ensuring the safety and nutrition of their students,” noted Nicole Gerber, director of strategic communications at the National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), a policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. “But now the focus is increasingly on how to keep students learning—and that requires forging teacher policies to address issues about which no one had ever given much thought.”
Earlier this month, NCTQ issued a report analyzing 41 school districts’ policies relevant to teacher work, pay, and leave in situations of emergency school closures. It found that fewer than half had such policies in place before the pandemic.
To help understand the range of agreements shaping remote learning efforts in districts, The Grade looked at these findings and spoke to school districts and union representatives in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and Dallas.
What we found is that most districts guaranteed teachers’ pay and established a minimum number of hours within the 40-hour workweek for teachers to engage with students and parents.
Education reporters can investigate their own districts to see if such agreements exist, where they fall within the range of agreements described here or in the NCTQ report, and how they affect the provision of remote learning.
GUARANTEED PAY
With the exception of Dallas, all the districts mentioned are guaranteeing normal paychecks and benefits to all salaried and hourly employees, including teachers and long-term substitutes, while schools are closed. The Dallas Independent School District approved an Extended Emergency Leave through its school board.
In Miami, a Letter of Understanding (LOU) was signed even before the March 13 school closure and a more recent agreement was reached after spring break.
“We started conversations with the district early and had to come up with a new emergency plan”, Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of the United Teachers of Dade (UTD), said in a phone interview. “We have some measures in place learned from hurricane season but not to this extent. This is different.”
UTD could sign the agreement because the union has a “good relationship” with the district. “It is not perfect,” Hernandez-Mats added. “But we look through all these things with a lot of compassion because distance learning is fairly new for teachers.” According to Hernandez-Mats, the language of their agreement was adapted by other districts in Florida.
Los Angeles Unified School District reached a more comprehensive labor deal with the United Teachers of Los Angeles to formalize district operations during closures, which are expected to last the rest of this school year.
The union in Chicago assured some work expectations and remote learning guidance for its teachers.
In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the district have issued informal joint communications on FAQs and contractual issues.
Above: For its early April report, NCTQ scanned a number of districts and found posted remote learning agreements for Hawaii, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, Orange County (FL), San Diego, and Seattle.
SETTING HOURS
Most of the teachers’ contracts remain in place, requiring 40 hours of work per week, but teachers’ availability for student interactions via email or online platforms varies across districts.
“We want to make sure schools don’t want to recreate a normal schedule minute-to-minute because that is not necessarily replicable in a remote environment,” Dick Riley, press secretary of the UFT, said in a phone interview. “School days should be flexible.”
New York City teachers are expected to plan lessons and instructional materials within the contractual workday, but there are no rules about working a specific number of hours.
In Miami-Dade, the agreement says teachers should provide no fewer than three hours per day for online interaction with their students.
The requirement for Chicago educators is four hours, including two hours of live virtual engagement (Google Meet) and two hours for other tasks, such as giving feedback or chatting with parents.
For teachers in L.A., the agreement acknowledges that teachers could need time for taking care of their own children, elderly parents, or sick relatives. They are required to work four hours per day including planning time, training, and faculty meetings.
Dallas encourages teachers to “strictly” keep their work under 40 hours per week, in order to not accrue overtime, but does not specify how many of those hours teachers should be available for interaction with students.
We want to make sure schools don’t want to recreate a normal schedule minute-to-minute because that is not necessarily replicable in a remote environment… School days should be flexible. – UFT press secretary Dick Riley
ONLINE TEACHING
For some districts, such as Los Angeles, worries about the security of video services scuttled plans to require teachers to provide live video instruction.
Transitioning to online teaching quickly has been difficult for teachers in Miami, said Hernandez-Mats. The first day of school closure, 15,000 teachers registered for a three-day online course, called Transform Learning with Microsoft Teams. “The workload is greater and so is the amount of stress,” she said.
In Chicago, some teachers said they are not well equipped. Although the district is providing new devices to students for online learning, those are very limited for educators.
“Some teachers’ equipment is just not enough,” Chris Geovanis, director of communications for the Chicago Teachers Union, said in a phone interview. “For Google Classrooms, one needs a computer with a lot of RAM memory, a fast processor, huge broadband, Microsoft functions, etc.”
“I am actually working on a desktop,” Geovanis added.
To provide some sense of how these issues can be part of covering the COVID-19 crisis, here are some links to local or national stories addressing these topics: KPCC LA, Los Angeles Daily News, CBS DFW(Dallas), Chicago Tribune.
To be clear, remote learning agreements aren’t limited to pay, hours, and teaching strategies. Other issues reporters can consider are if teachers were trained to shift their teaching online, how districts are outfitting teachers with the needed hardware, and how time off and leave policies have been adjusted during closings. In at least one district — NYC — the new agreement stipulates that teachers can take four days of paid leave at a future date in the case of losing a close family member, due to the current impossibility of getting together for funerals.
Created in a crisis, these agreements are a core part of district remote learning programs that education reporters are covering.
Originally published here
