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Celina Education Association Co-President Tressie Sigmond addresses school board members with concerns regarding a newly enacted position to no longer grant unpaid leave requests except for reasons of illness or disability.
CELINA - School board members said they're willing to discuss with teachers and classified staff a recently enacted position to no longer grant unpaid leave requests except for reasons of illness or disability.
A large throng of teachers attended the regular school board meeting on Monday night in response to a statement board members issued on last month's board agenda and a related story published in The Daily Standard on May 17.
"Due to the increase in absenteeism and the difficulty finding substitutes for teaching and classified staff, the Board will no longer be granting requests for unpaid leave for educational, profession, or other purposes," the statement reads. "The Board will continue to grant legitimate and verifiable requests for unpaid leave for illness or other disability."
Celina Education Association Co-Presidents Tressie Sigmond and Cheri Hall on Monday night explained the reasons why teachers request and in some circumstances rely on deduct days and pointed out issues they had with the newspaper's story, which was informed by comments made by superintendent Ken Schmiesing.
Under their contract, teachers get three personal days and up to 15 sick days per calendar year, Schmiesing had told the newspaper. They are also entitled to up to 12 months of unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, he had said.
"Every board meeting there's a number of employees that do request deduct days. There is research out there that when the teacher is not in the classroom, where there's a sub in the classroom the actual learning of the student goes down," Schmiesing had told the newspaper. "It's very helpful to have the teacher in the classroom as much as possible."
Asked the reasons why teachers request deduct days, Schmiesing had said "most often it seems it's to go on a family vacation."
"That's not always the case. Sometimes it's to attend their child's graduation whether that be from preschool, college or university," he had added.
He also had said school officials had felt deduct days had been abused.
"If it would have been a situation where there were maybe five requests per year, that would be one thing. But when you're talking six, seven, eight, even up to 10 requests per month, then that becomes another matter where we did feel that it's going to a point where it's affecting students' education," he had said.
Sigmond said "we cannot disagree that we are seeing more deduct days being asked for."
"However, of the almost 90 days asked for in the 2022-23 school year - and I did not include one classified that had asked for four to six weeks in that 90 days - teachers account for only 24.5 of those days," she said. "And I did not include eight of them that were asked for by a teacher at Head Start because that is not our contract."
There are roughly 200 teachers each working 186-day-contracts, she said. Together, that amounts to 37,200 days of work per year, she noted, contrasting that figure to the 24.5 deduct days requested by teachers last school year.
Additionally, almost all of the deduct days were asked for and approved months in advance, she said, taking aim at the phrase "rampant absenteeism" that appeared in the May 17 article based on Schmiesing's assessment of the number of deduct days requested. One definition of the word rampant is "flourishing or spreading unchecked."
Teachers wear many different hats, she said. Many have children who are involved in multiple activities which they want to support, including graduations.
Due to a clause in their contract, teachers are unable to take personal days during the last two weeks of the school year, when many graduations are held, she said.
"So even if the person has personal days remaining, that teacher must ask for deduct days in order to attend graduations," Sigmond said.
Teachers are faced with many different circumstances that may prompt them to ask for deduct days, she continued.
"Teachers go into teaching to make a difference in their students' lives but they should not have to miss out on the lives of their own children or families," she said. "I can't think of any teacher that would enjoy taking a deduct day. They are expensive to the teacher."
It seems the district saves money when teachers take deduct days, Sigmond said.
"Once you take the teachers' pay for a deduct day and minus what the cost of paying a sub is, there is a savings to the district," she said.
Sigmond said CEA would like to open a discussion about deduct days with board members.
"We feel that there are valid reasons that deduct days are needed. We would like to see some parameters set up so that deduct days can be approved for those circumstances that are valid and unavoidable," she said.
Celina school board member Bill Sell explains the board's recent decision regarding absenteeism.
Board members said they would be willing to have that conversation.
"We're in the business to get along and make this work the best for everybody," said board member Barbara Vorhees.
Board member Bill Sell said he broached the topic about a year and a half ago with the board, noting the teachers' contract doesn't provide guidance in the matter. He said he thought some kind of policy was truly needed.
"So that we don't have one person taking five (deduct days) and 95% of the people taking none. That just didn't make sense to me," Sell said. "Whether they were classified or whether it was actually the teaching staff, what is the number? Is there a number? And to be honest, there weren't any answers to that."
