Dr. Marc Gaswirth, a retired public school administrator, has written extensively for more than 40 years about public sector bargaining and school human resources.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a column for NJ Education Report expressing serious concerns about the release of A-5060, a bill that would expand the definition of a sick day for school employees and allow these days, which may accumulate without limit, to be used not just for an employee’s illness or injury but also for a wide range of personal reasons already provided in labor agreements.

Given the pandemic’s unsettling effects on learning and subsequent evidence of a decline in standardized test scores, the bill is terribly misguided, focused solely on increasing school employees’ paid leave benefits, and clearly contrary to students’ educational needs.

A broader legal definition of a “sick day” would increase the rate of school staff absenteeism well beyond its current level and further undermine opportunities for student growth. To those who might disagree with this assertion pointing out that substitutes can fill the gap, ask your local school superintendent to explain the difficulty of finding an adequate number of qualified substitutes to make up for any possible learning deficits higher staff absenteeism is likely to cause.

This specific bill got me thinking about not only the amount of instructional time that is already lost annually but also policymakers failing to see that proposals of this type can and do conflict with an established and overriding objective—to deliver more and better learning opportunities to students.

While New Jersey so far has largely avoided the polarizing education policy issue debates roiling other parts of the nation where the political left presses schools to embrace and promote greater “diversity, inclusiveness and equity,” the meaning of which may evade or even disturb some people, the right pushes for greater parental empowerment over topics that schools teach or books that should no longer remain in school libraries.

New Jersey has largely avoided these controversies, but one issue that should but hasn’t generated much interest among policymakers, educators and parent groups is the inexorable loss of valuable instructional time.

A case in point: For the past several months, a state task force has been addressing the current teacher shortage to create a larger cohort of candidates to fill critical vacancies as many students are without qualified teachers; yet, for decades, local school districts and labor unions have been agreeing to numerous contractual arrangements effectively denying students more contact time with teachers. More than a simple contradiction, this sounds like a form of cognitive dissonance.

New Jersey law stipulates that public schools must provide instruction to students for a minimum of 180 days each school year, with a day defined as having at least four hours of instruction. An official school day thus can serve dual purposes: as a legal day of instruction and as an opportunity to provide staff in-service or schedule afternoon parent–teacher conferences Even though a regular instructional day usually consists of between five and one-half and six hours, abbreviated days allow delayed openings or early school closings for inclement weather, early dismissals before the start of vacation periods, or shorten school days toward the end of the school year to qualify as a full day

The law further requires each school board to establish an annual school calendar, which, in addition to teacher workdays, includes days when schools are not in session. These calendars set 180 days for student instruction and two to three days for staff orientation and in-service. A school calendar may initially show 183 to 186 scheduled days that teachers report to work, but it is rare that they are in contact with students for more than the 180-day minimum requirement.

More problematic is that the actual amount of time in which regularly assigned, qualified teachers are actually instructing turns out to be far less, the result of generous paid and unpaid leave provisions granted by legislative action and negotiated agreements.  Among these are sick, personal, professional, family illnesses, bereavement, jury duty, and extended leave for child care purposes.

Others reasons of course contribute to instructional loss such as student absenteeism chronic in some districts, mandatory state school safety drills, required state testing days, legislated curriculum add-ons, and the customary downtime toward the end of the school year when schools prepare to close for the summer recess.

Once all these reasons are factored into the loss of targeted and sustained learning, students may be meeting with their regularly assigned teachers as little as two-thirds of the required annual 180 days of instruction.

Another example: This year’s mild winter has recently prompted many school boards to revise their school calendars. Typically, three days, commonly known as snow days, are built into each school calendar; if any are unused, they are generally re-designated as additional days schools are closed. Often part of the negotiated agreement, this practice makes most educators and students happy, though perhaps not so for working parents who may have to arrange additional daycare for their children or those who may feel that these days represent a missed opportunity for additional classroom experiences.

Why should a practice of eliminating up to three days of instruction or releasing students and staff early on certain days be both concerning and disturbing? Simply put, it conveys the wrong message: a widespread, casual and indifferent attitude about the importance of instructional time and the resultant loss of learning opportunities.

Even as employees’ salaries have grown for decades, there has been evidence that student instructional time on a yearly or daily basis has increased. Most unions will reject the idea of a longer work year or work day. If any did, they would seek much higher salary settlements to alter the current trend line, which clearly shows that while teacher-student contact time has remained largely unchanged over time, opportunities for school employees to take more time off with and without pay has markedly increased.

As we contemplate how schools really operate, greater thought must be given to recovering lost instructional time or how to make far more efficient use of that which is now available.

A recommendation: Beyond studying the teacher shortage issue, the state should examine a closely-related issue: lost instructional time stemming from legal provisions and calcified labor agreements containing overly generous leave provisions, onerous state mandates, and even certain school practices. Don’t bet on that happening anytime soon. It would take abundant political courage, which is often in short supply, to raise and address these matters publicly, and in effect, challenge the education establishment and the practices it has long sanctioned.