HISD OKs expanded paid leave benefits

Houston ISD trustees unanimously agreed Thursday to extend paid leave benefits to staff members forced to quarantine or isolate because of COVID-19, siding with staff members who objected to the district’s initial plans to only pay those potentially infected while on the job.

Under the policy passed by a 9-0 vote, Houston Independent School District employees will get up to 10 days of paid leave if they cannot work remotely while in quarantine or isolation in the second half of the school year. The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act mandated that school districts offer the benefit in 2020, but those provisions expired at the end of the year, and members of Congress did not extend them.

“I support anything we can do to support our staff at this time,” HISD Trustee Anne Sung said.

HISD administrators took heat from employees in mid-December after announcing that staff members would have to use their regular paid leave — typically10 to 12 days per school year — if they missed work for “reasons not specifically related to workplace exposure to the coronavirus.”

Some employees argued that they could not definitively prove where a COVID-19 infection occurred, while others worried that symptomatic hourly staff members would report to work for financial reasons.

Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan reversed course days after announcing the initial plan, drawing up a policy to extend the paid leave provisions.

Lathan added that principals will have discretion to decide whether campus-based staff, including teachers, can continue working from home while in quarantine or isolation.

Several of the region’s largest districts voted in December to keep the FFCRA benefits intact, including Cy-Fair, Fort Bend and Pasadena ISDs. HISD officials did not specify the potential cost of the move, but the price could approach $1 million based on costs reported by smaller neighboring districts.

HISD is reporting 213 active COVID-19 cases among staff and 818 cumulative employee cases since early September.

Melissa Phillip / Staff file photo Houston Independent School District teacher Jessica Recio works from behind a partition with one of her kindergarten students at Brookline Elementary School in October.