Scales are the backbone of western music, and not just jazz music either, though it's especially true in jazz. If you think scales are boring, it's time for an attitude change. There are so many different scales and there are so many different ways to practice any one of them that there's no excuse for ever being bored. To become a jazz player, you've got to build up a vocabulary of things that just fly off the fingers without thinking about it, and the scales are the first thing to tackle. This naturally leads into chord studies and arpeggiation exercises, since chords are derived from scales.
Jazz musicians have to know their chords, period.
Then, it's into the books we go. I keep this separate from the scale and chord studies because students should transcend the need to read scales and chords as quickly as possible. The other important element is playing along with recordings . This could be inserted before the reading section above or at the end of your session. If you're short on time you can choose either some reading or some play-along time.