SC law guaranteed teachers 2 days of planning time. Some schools still aren’t complying.

COLUMBIA — When teachers went back to school this summer, a state law guaranteed them two days free of meetings to plan for the year ahead.

Nearly 1 in 5 teachers didn’t get those planning days, according to a survey done by the Palmetto State Teachers Association, the state’s largest educator advocacy group.

The guaranteed planning time was part of last year’s sweeping education law titled the Educator Assistance Act, which both chambers passed unanimously. Meant to help keep qualified teachers in classrooms, the law required a spate of changes for schools.

Under the law, schools must give teachers an estimated salary before renewing contracts, give a heads-up before moving teachers to a different school or subject, and count professional development meetings toward teachers’ required training credits.

Teachers’ advocates called the law a huge win for teachers and pointed to the required planning time as one of the biggest victories included. Before that, state law allowed districts to give teachers up to two days of planning time but didn’t require it, letting schools eat up that time with meetings and other assignments.

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Although teachers told the association they didn’t get their full work days, just one official complaint was made to the state Department of Education, spokeswoman Christy Cox said in an email.

“At this time, we are not aware of widespread compliance issues,” Cox said.

Setting aside two days each year before school starts should have been an easy way to improve teachers’ lives, said Patrick Kelly, a teachers’ advocate for the Palmetto State Teachers Association. The law gave schools some flexibility in setting schedules, allowing them to dole out the time in half days if needed.

But teachers say their schools aren’t following the rule, Kelly said.

That didn’t surprise him, he added.

Roughly a quarter of teachers who responded to the survey also reported not receiving their 30-minutes’ worth of breaks throughout the day as required under a 2022 law, he said.

That was meant to ensure teachers have time to go to the bathroom and eat lunch. Legislators put that into law after hearing from teachers that they had to wear diapers because they didn’t have any break time during the school day.

“There needs to be a greater commitment to implementation of state law,” said Kelly, who teaches advanced government classes at Blythewood High School.

Uninterrupted planning

Kelly expected some schools to fail to follow the law last year.

Gov. Henry McMaster signed the bill into law May, 7, 2025, and it took effect July 1, just weeks before the school year started. Most districts already had their back-to-school schedules set, making it harder to carve out teacher planning time not already included, Kelly said.

So, when about 22% of teachers surveyed last year said they didn’t get two full days of uninterrupted planning time, Kelly wasn’t surprised. He was more surprised when this year’s survey results showed 18% of teachers still didn’t get their two days.

“This is not a terribly difficult piece of legislation to implement if you have the will and desire to implement it,” he said.

The responses came from teachers across the state and across grade levels, Kelly said. No single district or school accounted for a large number of the responses, suggesting a wider-reaching issue of implementation, he said.

There was no single reason teachers gave for their school not giving the allotted time, Kelly said.

Very few cases seemed to involve a teacher asking for their planning days and being told “no,” Kelly said. More often, teachers said they technically had the days scheduled as planning time but got pulled into meetings or told how to spend that time, which the law was supposed to prevent.

Dena Crews, president of the South Carolina Education Association, heard similar complaints from teachers this school year, she said. The association is in the process of conducting its own survey to figure out how widespread the concerns are from its members.

Like Kelly, Crews heard complaints from teachers who had planning days on the schedule but got pulled away from their work into meetings.

“That time is being taken away from them and isn’t being protected the way it’s supposed to be,” said Crews, a former elementary school teacher and reading coach.

Planning time before the start of the school year is essential, Kelly and Crews said.

New teachers need time to get familiar with their lesson plans and set up their classrooms. Veteran teachers need time to refresh and update what they’re teaching. And all teachers need to learn about their students for the coming school year, said Senate Education Chairman Greg Hembree.

With meetings and other tasks still eating into teachers’ planning time, Hembree questioned how teachers are supposed to get everything done.

“Should they do it in their free time?” the Little River Republican said. “That doesn’t seem fair. It’s part of work.”

More than anything else, great teaching is built on strong relationships with students so teachers can support them in the ways they need, Kelly said. Teachers can’t do that part of the work if they spend every spare minute in meetings or doing administrative work, he said.

“Who ultimately is going to suffer is students,” Kelly said.

Potential penalties

When the Department of Education gets complaints, the agency first tells the district and offers help to resolve the issue, with state “involvement as needed,” Cox said.

The agency sent out a memo to superintendents last year explaining the law and setting guidelines for how districts can comply, to include splitting the time into half days.

“The Department strongly supports protecting teachers’ valuable planning and preparation time and ensuring educators have the tools and flexibility they need to begin the school year successfully,” Cox said in a statement.

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With that in mind, there’s no reason teachers shouldn’t get their allotted time, Crews said.

“It’s not a choice of, ‘I’ll give it if I can and I won’t if I can’t,’” Crews said. “This is law.”

She supports the agency’s approach of helping districts schedule the time instead of punishing them for not following the law.

Generally, teachers are reluctant to make official complaints that get their district in trouble. If the state takes away funding because of administrative problems, students lose out on resources, Kelly said.

But there is no financial penalty in the law for failing to give teachers unencumbered planning time.

And in the survey, no teacher reported violations of the law that would be costly, he said. Schools that fail to give teachers a proposed contract, including an estimated salary, for the upcoming year by May 1 stand to lose $10,000 per late contract.

Hembree said legislators might need to consider some sort of penalty for schools not providing two meeting-free days. Without a consequence for enforcement, districts have little incentive to do what legislators say, he said.

“I’ve been worn out with schools ignoring state policy,” Hembree said. “They act like they’re the boss, and they’re not.”

Otherwise, the only way to force a school to follow the law is through the courts, which is unlikely since filing a lawsuit is time-consuming and expensive, Hembree said.

“If there’s no penalty, there’s no rule,” Hembree said.