Bill seeks 6 paid weeks for teacher maternity
Almost all teachers and other employees in California public schools and community colleges would get six weeks of fully paid maternity leave starting next year under a bill that is awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s approval.
Proponents say AB568 would help schools attract and retain staff at a time when many are facing teacher shortages. The bill “will help keep valued school employees in the workforce after having children, and will end the current discriminatory practice that forces only female employees to utilize their (sick) leave balances to bear children,” a coalition of school employee groups and unions said in a letter to Brown.
Opponents say the new benefit would reduce funds available for other school needs because the state would not provide any money to pay for it. They also say it will add complexity to an already complicated set of employee-leave programs. Based on my reporting, that latter might be an understatement.
It seems it might be simpler to require school districts and their employees to join in the Cali-
fornia Disability Insurance Program.
This program provides partial pay when employees take time off for illness or pregnancy, or to care for a sick family member or newborn. This program is funded entirely by employees, through payroll deduction. Most private-sector employees must participate in the program. School districts can participate, but most don’t.
School employees, however, are covered by other leave and benefit laws. It gets complicated because some provide job-protected time off without pay and others provide partial pay — but their timelines are not the same.
In California, employers with five or more employees must give mothers unpaid time off when they can’t work because they are pregnant or recovering from childbirth. This is called Pregnancy Disability Leave. It could last up to 17.3 weeks (about four months) if the mother is disabled that long. For normal pregnancies, most health care providers will certify a leave up to four weeks before birth and six weeks after (or eight weeks after a Cesarean section).
In addition, under the California Family Rights Act, most employees can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn, newly adopted or newly placed foster child within the first year of the child’s birth or placement. This is often called baby bonding leave. New moms often take this after their pregnancy disability leave ends. It doesn’t have to be taken all at once, and both parents can take it.
Under current law, school employees who don’t participate in the state disability program and want to get paid during pregnancy disability and baby bonding leave must use their accumulated paid sick leave. Teachers generally get 10 days annually and can carry unused days over from year to year.
Once they have exhausted their paid sick leave, they are entitled to “differential pay.” This is the difference between their normal salary and what the school pays a substitute, although some districts have agreed to pay differential pay at 50 percent of the employee’s salary.
School employees can get differential pay for illness and injury, including pregnancy disability, for up to five months per year. Under recent state legislation, they can also get differential pay for up to 12 weeks of baby bonding leave. In both cases, they must exhaust their sick leave before getting differential pay.
Suppose a teacher has accumulated five weeks of sick leave. She and her doctor determine she needs four weeks before and six weeks after childbirth or 10 weeks total.
Today, if she wants to get paid, she must use her sick leave. After her five weeks are used up, she can begin collecting differential pay for the remaining five weeks of her disability and up to 12 weeks of baby bonding leave.
If her school allows her to take any additional time off (many do), it will be without pay.
Under AB568, the teacher would get six weeks of fully paid pregnancy disability leave before touching her accumulated sick leave. After that, if she wanted to get differential pay, she would first have to exhaust her five weeks of accumulated sick leave. She could then switch to differential pay for the remainder of her pregnancy disability and baby bonding leaves.
Diana Garcia Clavero, who teaches third grade in Half Moon Bay, would like to have a child but has been holding off because of the high cost of living here. “Time is running out for me. I’m not a spring chicken any more,” said Clavero, who is almost 38. Getting six weeks of paid sick leave “would most definitely tip the balance for me,” she said.
What’s not entirely clear is whether the bill, by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, would give employees protected time off beyond what is required today.
Evan McLaughlin, Fletcher’s chief of staff, said it would not. He said the bill is intended to provide six weeks of pay during the employee’s existing pregnancy disability leave, not add any time to it. “This is just a wage replacement program,” he said. “This is not supplemental protected leave.”
But others say the way it’s worded, it would add at least six weeks to an employee’s pregnancy disability leave. Instead of getting up to 17.3 weeks, a woman would get at least 23.3 weeks, if she needs that long.
“We are interpreting AB 568 to require six weeks of paid leave in addition to the protected leaves currently available” under various laws and benefit programs, a group of school districts and groups representing them said in a letter asking Brown to veto the bill.
Jacob Rukeyser, an attorney for the California Teachers Association, said the bill “could extend the duration of a leave in a catastrophic case where a woman is having a very difficult pregnancy or childbirth and needed a lot of time off. In that case, the extra six weeks would be tacked onto pregnancy disability leave,” he said.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the California Department of Finance, said the bill would provide at least six weeks of protected pregnancy disability leave beyond what’s now available. The first six weeks would be fully paid, the rest at the differential rate after the employee exhausted her paid sick leave, he said.
The finance department estimated that if 1 percent of school and community college employees took six weeks of leave at full pay, it would cost the state’s schools $43 million to $163 million per year.
The department opposed the bill, in part because “mandating employee benefits such as maternity leave through legislation sets a precedent for other represented government employee groups to lobby for paid maternity and paternity leave.”
If Brown signs the bill, it would take effect Jan. 1. Teachers who are already on pregnancy disability leave at that time could benefit, said Sandra Woliver, an attorney with Dannis Woliver Kelley who represents school districts. For example, if a doctor prescribed six weeks of pregnancy disability leave, and the employee had already taken four weeks at the end of this year, she would have two weeks of fully paid leave starting Jan. 1.