Teacher tells Caddo Parish board daily common planning is reducing individual planning time, cites state statute

Carlos McDaniel, a teacher at Southwood and president of the Caddo Federation of Teachers (division of Red River United), told the Caddo Parish School Board during public comment that the district's shift to daily common planning has cut into teachers' individual planning time and other duties. "Louisiana state law ... guarantees at least 45 minutes of planning time daily. Or if that is not possible ... that the planning time given to each teacher adds up to 225 minutes a week," McDaniel said, adding that the block schedule has effectively halved planning time for some teachers.

McDaniel said common planning can be beneficial for teachers who share scope and sequence, allowing co-planning and coordination across grade levels. "Common planning is a great tool for teachers of core classes," he said. But he warned that daily co-planning can become burdensome for some groups whose classes do not share a curriculum and that meetings often run beyond the scheduled hour, causing teachers to miss assigned supervision duties. "This has kept some of them from standing duty as they are supposed to, leaving the student center and cafeteria inadequately covered," McDaniel said, linking the shortfall in supervision to increased workload on colleagues.

McDaniel described his own co-planning arrangement at Southwood — an art teacher, choir and band teachers who meet once a week for an hour and coordinate units so daily meetings are unnecessary. He noted other duties that occupy planning time beyond lesson design, including grading, IEP and IAP paperwork, parent contact, preparing materials, club or extracurricular planning and discipline documentation. "We plan, yes. We grade. We create class documents. We make copies. We send and respond to emails. We contact parents," he said.

McDaniel asked the board to consider that daily required co-planning may be excessive where weekly meetings suffice and said the emphasis on group meetings can reduce the time teachers need for individual responsibilities. The visitor comment period closed after McDaniel's remarks and the superintendent took over the agenda; the transcript records no formal board motion or direction tied to McDaniel's presentation.