90% of Beaufort Co. teachers surveyed want to do this. The school board is considering it
The county’s largest employer — the Beaufort County School District — is considering re-evaluating its sick leave policies after a majority of teachers indicated they were unsatisfied with the district’s current practices, according to survey results presented to the school board Tuesday.
Beaufort County teachers can accrue up to 12 sick days per year.
One in five teachers in the district miss more than 10 days of work, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.
Although the board did not take any official action Tuesday, many teachers, administrators and school board members agree that granting teachers more flexibility with sick leave could help the district improve teacher retention and limit the number of chronically absent teachers.
“We need to show that we value our teachers and we treat them as professionals, and this is a simple example of how we can do that,” said board member David Striebinger.
The survey, which included responses from about 560 teachers, came after a handful of meetings throughout the past year where board members have suggested allowing teachers to use their sick days as personal days.
The results indicated that:
90 percent of teachers feel they should to be allowed to use their sick days as needed for personal days.
83 percent of teachers are not satisfied with the $10 per day reimbursement rate for unused sick days.
53 percent of teachers think the district’s current bereavement policies are not fair nor equal.
As district policies stand, employees can only use sick leave “for absences caused by personal illness or illness of an immediate family member requiring the employee to provide care, and for no other reason.”
Employees are allowed to use up to two days of their accrued sick leave days a year for personal leave, but they must submit a request to their principal in advance for approval.
When the district started awarding teachers with an annual a cost-of-living stipend in 2015, many hoped that it would help curb the district’s teacher turnover rate.
But, in spite of raising teachers’ pay by $4,000 over the past four years, the percentage of teachers leaving the district at the end of each year has remained around 12 percent since 2012-13, according to data from the South Carolina Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement.
Nancy Ungvarsky, the 2017-18 District Teacher of the Year and the chairman of the district’s teacher forum, said the district needs to explore more avenues to retain teachers.
“It doesn’t have to be sick time, but that’s an issue that lots of teachers are concerned about,” Ungvarsky said. “This (survey) was purely about giving (the board) information about how teachers feel on a particular topic, and I’m hoping it leads to a discussion about how that can be turned into improving teacher recruitment and retention.”
The school board did not vote on any policy changes Tuesday, but Striebinger urged the board chairman Earl Campbell to put the matter on an upcoming school board meeting agenda.
“We have the feedback now from the teachers, so we have to show them that we value their input and we’re going to do something about it,” Striebinger said.
Chronically absent teachers
During the 2015-16 school year, 21 percent of teachers in the Beaufort County School District were chronically absent, which means that they missed more than 10 days of school, according to the most recent data collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Across the state of South Carolina, 30 percent of teachers were chronically absent during the same school year.
Although the district remains below the statewide average, the amount of chronically absent teachers varies widely across the school district.
At Whale Branch Elementary School — the most impoverished school in the district — 29 percent of teachers were chronically absent during the 2015-16 school year.
Yet, only 15 percent of teachers at River Ridge Academy and 10 percent of teachers Robert Smalls Internal Academy were chronically absent during that same school year, according to the Office of Civil Rights data.
When asked Wednesday if he was worried that more flexible sick leave policies would lead to more teacher absences, board member Striebinger said no, offering a different stance.
“I don’t think we have to worry about sick days with teachers,” he said. “... If we have a morale problem, that’s what would cause people to use their sick time when they don’t need to. So the root of the problem to me is teacher morale.”
This story was originally published November 28, 2018 at 4:04 PM.