Good day, CharterFolk.
Today we are pleased to share a Contributor Column from Jass Stewart, Chief Innovation & Impact Officer at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.
We provide a bio for Jass below.
Jass Stewart is Chief Innovation & Impact Officer at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools. He leads long-term strategy, communication, marketing, advocacy, and innovation pilots, including a collaboration with Alliance’s Teaching & Learning and Network Initiatives teams on the Reimagining the Alliance Educator pilot, which expands teacher planning time, strengthens collaboration, and enhances student learning.
Previously, Jass was Deputy Chief of Staff at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, overseeing strategy, operations, and communication across 400 school districts. He also served three terms as City Councilor at Large in Brockton, MA, and held leadership roles at Big Picture Learning and Blackside Productions (Eyes on the Prize). An Emmy-winning writer and director, he holds degrees from Boston University and Fitchburg State University and was a Senior Fellow at MIT.
We are fortunate to have been able to present other material here about extraordinary AllianceFolk in recent years, including a CharterFolk X post about Jonathan Tiongco, Founding Principal and Executive Director for the Alliance Marine – Innovation & Technology 6-12 Complex last year, and another from 2024 celebrating Frank Baxter, Founding Board Member and Past Board Chair of the Alliance.
Today we add our first Contributor Column from the organization. Let’s get right to it.
Planning Time Isn’t a Perk. It’s Infrastructure: What if teacher burnout is a design problem, not a workforce problem?
A recent survey highlighted by the Los Angeles Times found that nearly half of California teachers are considering leaving the profession.
The headlines point to burnout, compensation, and morale. But beneath those symptoms sits a more fundamental issue, one that system leaders have more control over than we often admit:
Time.
More specifically, time to plan.
The Hidden Design Flaw in Teaching
In the U.S., the average public school teacher receives roughly four hours of planning time during the school day each week. And yet, teachers report spending closer to 14 hours per week preparing instruction.
That gap – about ten hours – is where the system quietly breaks down.
It’s where lesson design, data analysis, and feedback get pushed into nights and weekends. It’s where a profession built on intellectual preparation becomes one sustained by personal sacrifice.
We often talk about teacher burnout as inevitable. But it’s worth asking: What if burnout is not a people problem, but a design problem?
A Different Starting Point
Two years ago, at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, our Innovation & Impact team, working in close partnership with Teaching & Learning and Network Initiatives teams, started from a different premise: If we want better outcomes for our scholars, we need to redesign the conditions for teaching.
That led to the launch of our Reimagining the Alliance Educator pilot …
… across a small number of schools, highlighted in this video.
The goal was not incremental improvement. It was structural:
- Double (or more) teacher planning time within the school day
- Protect that time for meaningful, collaborative, and individual preparation
- Simultaneously expand enrichment and intervention opportunities for scholars
Today, teachers in our pilot schools receive 10–12 hours of dedicated planning time per week, more than double the national norm.
What Happens When Time Is Designed Differently
This is not “extra time.” It is reallocated, protected, and purpose-built time. Teachers are using it to:
- Analyze student work and adjust instruction in real time
- Collaborate with peers on lesson design and pacing
- Develop more engaging, standards-aligned curriculum
- Provide timely, actionable feedback to students
The early results are difficult to ignore:
- 91% of teachers report more time to reflect on scholar data and curriculum
- 91% report stronger lesson preparation and delivery
- 84% report improved work-life balance
- Teacher retention is improving faster than the network average at pilot schools
“If we’re looking at the success of our scholars, then we really need to invest in our educators so that we have enough planning time, proper grading time, and the ability to get creative with our lessons. And that needs to happen during our work hours so we’re not taking all of that home and taking away from our own personal lives and self-fulfillment,” said Natalie Hickman, teacher, 11th grade English Language Arts at Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High School.
And importantly, this is not just an adult experience story. We are seeing stronger academic growth in ELA and math and declines in chronic absenteeism across pilot sites, early signals that when teachers are better prepared our students feel the difference.
The Trade-offs We Avoid Talking About
Redesigning time is not simple. It requires trade-offs. Schools have had to rethink:
- Master schedules
- Staffing models
- Use of enrichment and elective time
- Budget allocations
In some cases, it means adding enrichment blocks so teachers can plan.
In others, it means rethinking how instructional minutes are delivered across the week. These are real constraints. But they are not immovable.
What’s often missing in the conversation is this: We already accept trade-offs, just in less visible ways.
We accept teacher burnout. We accept after-hours labor as the norm. We accept variability in instructional quality driven by time constraints.
The question is not whether trade offs exist. It’s which trade-offs we are willing to make.
From Pilot to Movement
This work is still evolving, but it is no longer contained to a pilot. We are expanding the model to additional schools across our network, continuing to refine based on site-level context and results. At the same time, we’ve begun sharing these learnings more broadly:
- Engaging with state legislators in Sacramento, CA on what’s working
- Hosting site visits and conversations with district and charter leaders
- Presenting at conferences and building a broader “roadshow” to push the field forward
The goal is not to prescribe a single model. Different schools will solve for time in different ways. But the underlying principle should be consistent. If we want to improve outcomes, we have to design for the work that makes those outcomes possible.
A Shift in Mindset
For too long, planning time has been treated as a perk, something nice to have if schedules allow. The reality is different. Without it, everything else becomes harder, and less effective. Planning time isn’t a perk. It’s infrastructure. And like any infrastructure, if it’s underbuilt, the entire system feels the strain.
Planning time is where:
- Instruction is designed
- Differentiation happens
- Feedback is generated
- Rigor is built
The Question for the Field
If nearly half of teachers are considering leaving the profession, we should absolutely ask how to recruit and retain talent. But we should also ask a more uncomfortable question:
Are we designing schools in a way that makes great teaching sustainable?
Because if the answer is no, no amount of recruitment will solve the problem.
Only redesign will.