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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
More perspective on sick days
I’m in Chicago today at a seminar run by the Hechinger Institute for Education and the Media, a fabulous non-profit housed at Columbia University that helps reporters better understand issues in education. Tomorrow I will be at the annual conference of the Education Writers Association, an national organization of journalists who cover education.
Since the Hechinger seminar is focused on teacher union contract negotiations, I took the opportunity today to ask about sick days.
As you may know, we’ve had a little discussion here about teacher sick days and whether Dayton Public Schools’ average over the past few years of 6.5 to 7.9 sick days per person is typical or above average.
In the comments, several teachers have made the case that those averages are to be expected. The arguments have ranged from “sick kids make sick teachers” to “teachers are over worked” to “teacher sick time can’t be compared to non-teachers.”
In the course of discussion, Cincinnati teachers union President Tim Kraus vouched for the third point.
Kraus gave an example. He said his union is often attacked for being greedy because of a contract provision that allows teachers to be paid out a full day’s pay for every two unused sick days. So veteran teachers who retire often get a big cash payout if they stockpiled a lot of unused sick days.
But Kraus pointed out that the provision allowing that ended up in the union’s contract as a swap. Teachers got the sick leave payout in exchange for taking small raises for several years. So Kraus argues it is not a matter of greed. It was a tradeoff that worked for both sides.
His point was this — depending on what was negotiated and why, sick time can mean different things in different contracts. And what is routine in district might seem extreme in others.
So back to Dayton, how good is its sick time provision? It looks pretty good on paper.
Dayton allows teachers to accumulate or take up to 15 sick days a year. Using this tool I found only seven of the 50 biggest districts in the country allow as many as 15 sick days a year. Most give nine or 10. Some give as few as five or six sick days a year.
Meanwhile, looking at Dayton’s contract (you can find it here), the sick provision otherwise appears pretty routine. I did note that the language does not list “mental health” days off as a permitted use for sick time, as some teachers argued in the comments.
I’ve got some more poking around to do on this issue and then I’ll report back.
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