TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE–WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2009   Know Your Rights: Planning and Preparation Periods Guaranteed by State Law   Every year it seems that some administrators need remedial instruction on teachers' state-guaranteed right to planning and preparation time that is under each teacher’s individual control. So here for your ready reference is the exact language of the state law, found in Texas Education Code Section 21.404:   "Each classroom teacher is entitled to at least 450 minutes within each two-week period for instructional preparation, including parent-teacher conferences, evaluating students' work, and planning. A planning and preparation period may not be less than 45 minutes within the instructional day. During a planning and preparation period, a classroom teacher may not be required to participate in any other activity."   Who are the classroom teachers who get the benefit of this state guarantee? Education Code Section 5.001 has the answer:   "'Classroom teacher' means an educator who is employed by a school district and who, not less than an average of four hours each day, teaches in an academic instructional setting or a career and technology instructional setting.  The term does not include a teacher's aide or a full-time administrator."   Over the years, decisions of the state attorney general and commissioner of education have strongly reinforced the legislature's message that it is the individual teacher, not any administrator, who decides how the state-guaranteed planning and preparation time will be used. The key point is that this is indeed individual planning and preparation time, under the control of the individual teacher. Administrators who direct a teacher to use this individual planning time for "any other activity" not chosen by the individual teacher are in violation of state law.   Thus, if administrators want teachers to devote time to collaborative planning and preparation with colleagues that is not at the individual teacher's discretion, they can do so only in a manner that does not encroach on teacher's guaranteed 450 minutes of individual planning and prep time within each two-week period. One legal way to do so is simply to provide teachers with an additional planning period, over and above the 450-minute minimum.   One further note on how this law works: The state guarantees 450 minutes every two weeks in periods of not less than 45 minutes, but that's not the same as a guarantee of 45 minutes each and every day. School districts can grant planning and prep periods in 90-minute blocs of time every other day, just to cite one example that complies with the state law. Folks who believe there's a state guarantee of 45 minutes every day probably are remembering the old state law as it existed before the current version of the planning and prep guarantee was put in place back in 1995. Their district may have continued as a matter of local policy to provide the state-guaranteed 450 minutes in daily 45-minute increments, but that would be a purely local choice, not a state requirement.