Why teachers provide pregnancies around summer holidays

In teachers’ lounges across California, the same advice is whispered year after year: plan your babies around summer vacation.

Unlike private sector employees in California, teachers and other public employees do not have access to remunerated family vacation programs or state disability insurance. This leaves teachers – 73% of whom are women – under a complex ensemble of advantages which force them to use all their sickness times. Although their jobs are protected for 12 weeks, many cannot afford to take it. Planning a pregnancy around the summer holidays allows parents of teachers to nail them during the summer months, when school is not in session.

“It seems crazy to time a choice of reproduction around your work schedule,” said Maya Suzuki Daniels, English teacher at San Pedro High School. Daniels was lucky, giving birth to his son in July. But she had to return to work just two weeks after the start of school, when her son was about 8 weeks old – she couldn’t afford to take a leave.

But a new resolution adopted unanimously by the Los Angeles Unified School District Council this week seeks to strengthen the family leave paid for teachers and other district workers, and to improve the support of parents in order to make Lausd a “district of choice” for employees in the midst of a shortage of teachers across the state.

By attacking the paid family holidays to teachers, the Council is trying to progress on a question that collaborated the legislature. The legislators adopted two separate invoices which would have provided a paid leave after a birth; The first was opposed his veto in 2017 by Governor Jerry Brown, and the second was opposed his veto in 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom, citing costs. A third attempt, Bill 65 of the Assembly, presented by the head of the majority of the Assembly, Cecilia M. Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), is making its way through the Assembly.

A call to teachers’ parents

The Lausd resolution was presented by the members of the Tanya Ortiz Franklin school board, Kelly Gonez and Karla Griego – All Moms.

“We now have a school board that has five mothers who have some experience in school staff while having children,” said Gonez. “We know that parenthood is joyful, but we also know the challenges with which it is very tangible.”

“Parental package: Lausd as an equitable employer of choice for prosperous families” responds to a range of parental needs – including infertility support services, paid holidays, lactation spaces and childcare services – but is only the first step. The resolution obliges the district to study the employee’s boresic and parental health needs and develops an action plan by November.

This includes determining the cost of supplying 12 weeks of remunerated family leave and the search for the possibility that the state pays instead.

The resolution also calls for the district to take several immediate measures, in particular the improvement of lactation spaces, the identification of the links on each site to help employees navigate in a set of confusing advantages of the district and to find providers who offer affordable and safeguarding daycare for workers.

The effort also aims to improve the retention and recruitment of staff at a time when the sufficient hiring of teachers can be difficult – especially in a expensive city where the increase in the cost of having a family exceeds the salary of a teacher.

“These are things that will facilitate the task of our employees to stay with the district and build their family while they continue to build their career with the district,” said Gonez. “It’s not just good for them, but it is also good for the district, because increased retention means consistency in the staff of our school sites, and this also harvested the advantages for students.”

The current state of parental holidays for teachers

For two decades, California has provided family leave paid to private sector employees who pay state disability insurance and paid family holiday programs. Private sector workers can access eight weeks of partially paid leave after the birth of a child or to take care of a member of the sick family. Those who give birth can also access six to eight additional weeks of paid holidays in the state disability insurance program. These services have been reinforced in recent years, in particular by paying a higher percentage of workers’ wages.

But employees in the public sector, including teachers, are exempt from paying these programs and, therefore, are not eligible to receive services. Unions can oppose through labor negotiations, but it is rare.

This leaves teachers in a complex system after the birth of a child. Their jobs are generally protected for 12 weeks, but they have to go through their accumulated disease days before obtaining a “differential salary” of at least 50% for the rest of the time, according to the Assn California Teachers.

New teachers, or those who have already used their disease days, may not have days of illness accumulated to use. After the health insurance premiums and other costs are withdrawn from their pay check, many find themselves with little to live, said Erika Jones, professor of Lausd and secretary-treasurer.

“It is very common to get pregnant and have no salary,” said Jones. “I went to dining rooms where women are in work, dilated and trying to work until the very last minute because they don’t have enough days.”

Jasmin McGregor, a social worker at Audubon Middle School who shared her story in a video presented at the meeting of the board of directors on Tuesday, had a hard time after having a baby last May.

“Money was a stressor during my pregnancy and my postpartum period,” she said. “It has become very difficult for me and this is one of the reasons why I did not take the 12 weeks of parent affair. Because I had no money. ”

Legislative efforts to provide paid leave to teachers

Research has shown that women who have access to paid leave are more likely to return to work after having a baby. However, the two previous efforts of the Legislative Assembly to extend the family leave paid to teachers failed.

“Regarding teachers, they were completely abandoned in this regard,” Liz Morris, co -director of the Center for Worklife Law at UC College of the Law, San Francisco said. “Not providing paid leave for teachers is short, because (this) greatly contributes to retaining teachers.”

In 2019, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have provided teachers for six weeks of maternity leave paid. “Providing each Californian worker with paid family leave is a noble objective and a priority for my administration,” he said in his veto message. “However, this bill will probably bring in annual costs of tens of millions of dollars and should be considered as part of the annual budgetary process and within the framework of local collective negotiation.”

This legislative session, AB 65, would provide 14 weeks of paid leave to employees of school and community colleges. The invoice, which would cost around $ 120 million per year, would be paid through the general funds of proposal 98 and benefits from the support of teachers’ unions.

But the opponents, including the Assn. School administrators from California and ASSN. California School Boards, let’s say that the law would not be deactivated for districts because there is no dedicated source of funding and would exacerbate endowment shortages.

Instead, parental leave should be negotiated by teacher union negotiations, said Dorothy Johnson, ASSN legislative defender. School administrators from California. “To have a white check for this level of leave – there is no way to really plan or prepare it from the point of view of the endowment or the financial point of view, which, ultimately, hurts the students.”

This article is part of the Times early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to the age of 5. For more information on the initiative and its philanthropic donors, go to latimes.com/earlyyed.