I haven’t missed 10 days of work in four years, since I started.
I always considered my sick day as insurance against severe illness.
When I retired they gave me 1/2 pay for 130 of the days, the other were lost although I offered them up for a fund covering teachers in the district who had cancer.
My wife worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for 40+ years and she said you would be surprised at the number of teachers out for workmens compensation.
My wife worked for over 25 years in the school system (Therapist not a teacher). Kids are walking petri dishes of all sorts of virus’. working with 30 kids a day there will be a tendency to come down with various ailments at a higher rate than most.
[More than 1 in 4 of the nation’s full-time teachers are considered chronically absent from school]
and often leave substitute teachers with inadequate lesson plans.
The Wife’s Union Teacher contract ALLOWS eleven paid days off.
5 sick, 5 personal, and one “Union Activity Day” which usually means a paid day off for protesting at the Statehouse.
She has well over 100 days “Saved up” at this point in her career.
Most teachers get 10-11 sick days and 3 personal days a year. What’s the problem ???
At the school where I work, many teachers take “mental health” days. If you have set foot in a public school recently, you would understand. If not, go down to your local playground or mall or movie theater or anywhere else where kids congregate and you’ll have some idea.
If you are a wonderful parent with wonderful kids...well, that’s wonderful. However, America is awash in broken homes, missing parents, poor parenting, feral teenagers - all of which receive considerable treatment here at FR.
Only after tenure has kicked in, I’ll bet!
It’s pretty high in some blue collar union jobs too!
The ONLY way to cure this is with money. At the hospital where I worked, people (non-union) were allowed 10 sick days per year, but you got an extra week’s worth of pay (bonus) if you took 5 or fewer days off. There was one year, where I was truly sick for 6 days, but I took the 6th day as a vacation day, so that I could qualify for the bonus. The other years, when I wasn’t sick, I didn’t take ANY days off. The school’s union contract needs to be revised so that teachers are either penalized for taking more than 10 days off, or given an incentive for taking 5 or fewer days off.
Would,you want to teach urban feral kids you cant control or punish because its racist to do so?
Not in favor of absentee teachers. But i can understand why urban demographics have higher teacher absentee rates.
Send the sheriff to arrest them for excessive absenteeism, just like they do to the parents of students who are absent excessively. If it’s good for students, it’s good for teachers.
For many of them, the kids will learn more with a sub in the room.