LAND O’ LAKES, Fla. – Teachers in Florida’s Pasco County School District are more concerned with their ability to smoke and chew tobacco on school grounds than with setting a tobacco-free example for students.

The local teachers union, the United School Employees of Pasco, recently countered a negotiation proposal by district officials who want to ban all tobacco use with an offer to end the practice at schools where 95 percent of staff approves the move, TampaBay.com reports.

“That’s our initial proposal,” Jim Ciadella, lead union negotiator told the news site. “I’m not sure how far we’re willing to go with this.”

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As the union contract stands now, school officials must get permission from all staff at each individual school to go tobacco free. The union’s counter proposal would essentially lower that threshold to obtaining permission from 95 out of every 100 teachers at each school, which is slightly better but still unrealistic.

“I’m glad we’re still talking about it, but it’s not what I wanted to see,” district employee relations director Betsy Kuhn told TampaBay.com.

Ciadella said the union isn’t as interested in talking about a district-wide tobacco ban as it is about increasing the amount of time teachers have away from students. The USEP wants teachers to have 60 percent more independent planning time to do things like copy papers and set up their classrooms. Ciadella told TampaBay.com that negotiations should focus on things that actually improve teaching and learning.

He thinks teachers spend too much time planning in groups, and wants teachers’ solo planning time to go from 250 minutes per week to 400 minutes.

“The district doesn’t seem to acknowledge that planning isn’t the only intellectual act of planning your lessons,” Ciadella told the news site.

That’s likely because research shows the most important factor in student learning in the amount of time a teacher spends in front of students. Giving educators more time to make copies and run errands may help in some senses, but it’s not nearly as important as actual instructional time.

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As the Center for American Progress noted in a recent report on teacher absences, “Teachers are the most important school-based determinant of students’ academic success. It’s no surprise teachers find that teacher absence lowers student achievement.”

In education, time is learning and increasing the time educators spend away from students means less learning, not more. And even if district officials shave time from other parts of the day to appease the union, such as from group planning, it’s highly unlikely to improve anything but teachers’ downtime.

At least Land O’ Lakes teachers would have enough time to go out for a smoke.

The other major negotiation issue in the district revolves around teacher evaluations, which teachers have complained is too scary and stressful. Currently, educators get one pre-planned formal evaluation a year.

District officials offered a new evaluation procedure that’s not as scary, but might actually be a lot more beneficial as far as getting a real idea on how well teachers perform in the classroom.

“To answer that question, the administration suggested that teachers receive three informal, unannounced reviews,” TampaBay.com reports. “If all three find the teacher effective or highly effective, the formal evaluation would be canceled.”

The unannounced reviews would at least give school officials the ability to monitor teachers in a much more realistic setting, and to get a real feel for how they lead their classrooms.

In far too many school districts educators are given the day and time of their evaluations well in advance, which gives teachers plenty of time to put their best foot forward and leaves administrators a distorted perspective on the day-to-day lessons students receive.