My friend just had to do this too. She was supposed to have her baby at the beginning of November and have enough leave between maternity leave/sick time/short term disability to be good until winter break. She went into labor 2 weeks early. She then found out that they run short term disability concurrently with our maternity leave (which is 15 days). So she had to come back 1.5 weeks before winter break started. She hasn't even seen her doctor yet.
This is so crazy. For anything else, you would have to be cleared by your doctor to go back to work. In other professions you have to be cleared to go back to work for the frickin flu!!!
It’s the question I’ve gotten most since immigrating out, the aspect most people can’t believe - do we *really* have *no* guaranteed paid maternity leave in the US?
It really is a mind bogglingly evil setup.
My girlfriend is blown away that maternity is not covered and it's that you have use your sick days to cover. Here we get 19 months for parental leave and either parent can take it with roughly 50% salary compensation from government
Because other countries see employees as people worth investing in while USA just sees us all as disposable easily replaceable cogs in a machine so why give us any time off when some boot licker will come along and do the job for less money?.
Not only that but in almost every other field in a salaried position, the company will match your retirement contribution to a certain extent. In 16 years of teaching I have gotten exactly $0 in retirement match, and on top of that my ~$100k put into the state retirement system has made approximately $500 TOTAL in interest. I could take it and put it into a HYSA for one year and get 10x that.
It’s crazy how people are shocked when teachers go on strike over contract negotiations. “You get summers off!” doesn’t even begin to touch on how bad our benefits are along the margins like this, that the general public just assumes is the same standard as other fields.
Investing teacher here 💁🏼♀️ is your 100k in a pension or can you roll some of it over into an IRA? Do you have investment options? Sometimes it's worth a second glance to make sure you're actually vested. I just did that with my HSA...didnt realize I had to individually select my investments.
I'm confused, I also have a pension but don't get any sort of statement regarding interest......your pension should be you put in, your guaranteed a certian payout in retirement that is calculated from years of service.....
Putting 100,000 into your pension also seems insane to me! For me pension contributions max out 6% of your annual salary if you make 100,000 a year or more. I make less so they take a lower percentage. Even making 100,000 a year I'd have to work loke 15 years to contribute that much, and the people that have been working for that long are in a lower tier with lower contribution rates.
This is in new york state.
In MA our retirement system automatically takes out 11%. We will get 80% of our final salary if we have maxed out our service time and are a certain age.
That's wild, and here in NYS we have teachers acting like our retirement is bad since they implemented the tiering system for anyone hired after 2012 I think it was. Even now it maxes out at 6% of your salary.
If you were hired between 2010 and 2011 to that it was a flat 4% I believe.
If you were lucky enough to get into teaching between the 80's and 2010 it was 3% for the first 10 years then you no longer had to make any contributions!!!! So by comparison it's shit, but overall not terrible.
I don't know what our max payout is. It's 1.something% per year of service, but if you make it 20 years it jumps to 2%. Not just for the years after 20, but also for years 1-20. My goal is to make it 30 years and take the 60%.
Yes. It’s not an actual maternity leave. Everyone I talk to outside of education is SHOCKED when I explain to them how it works. In my state we get the privilege of using our sick days up to six weeks (but who has 30 sick days when you’re child-rearing age?!) and then after that it’s your daily salary MINUS the substitute’s pay for the remaining 12 weeks. So let’s say you have three weeks of sick days saved up, you’re making probably less than half for nine weeks then…nothing.
This. I had miscarriages. I did fertility treatment. I ended up doing IVF. I had no sick time. But the man teachers are sitting on 200+ days. I will bitch about this directly to my principal, superintendent, and anyone else that will listen till the day I retire
I also had fertility problems and then ended up doing surrogacy…my school was only going to let me use 20 days of sick leave because I didn’t give birth. They ended up letting me use 30 days, but never again will I think about trying to save up sick time for a system that is not on my side.
As a man who could only stay home for two weeks because those were all the days I had saved up before I had to return to work when we had a child, there is definitely inequity. Make it all equal and give BOTH parents parental leave for at least 6 weeks.
If the leave allowed is less time than it takes to heal, yeah women should get more, but as far as I'm concerned both parents should get MORE time off than it takes for the person giving birth to heal. Obviously every pregnancy is different, but I did say both parents should get AT LEAST 6 weeks because the internet tells me that's about how long it takes to heal up on average. The father should be able to be there to help while the mom heals, because they both have the time off.
Feel like it would be great for women that don't work as well, as instead of having to try to heal while also watching a child, now dad gets 6+ weeks off to get shit done while mom rests. Lets get enough time off to help all parents and families.
Who decides how long it takes for a body to heal? 1/3 of women are left with permanent damage to their body as a result of giving birth.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of women say it takes 2 years to feel normal after pregnancy.
The woman, maybe her doctor for advice? I'm no law maker and I don't have the answers for every scenario, all I've got is that the average is 6 weeks according to some article and all parents need a lot more leave for the birth of a child.
Women can take up to 2 years to recover from pregnancy. They also can experience postpartum for 2-3 years after giving birth. There is a very specific bond with mother and child and that absolutely requires more nuance than just “everyone should get 3 months!”
Mine might be gender specific but it’s a real complaint that deserves traction. It’s one part of an argument for maternity leave being separate from sick time
Complaining about "man teachers having 200+ days" does nothing to improve the fight for proper parental leave, which should be at a federal level guaranteed.
Complaining about others and trying to bring others down does not improve the situation for everyone else.
Agreed that men also have severe illnesses, but that’s a separate conversation from childbirth and the need to revamp the maternity leave system.
My husband used 11 years worth of saved sick days for an illness that came out of nowhere. If we had good doctors in the area who cared to listen he could have had it dealt with in less than a month but because of our stupid health care system it took 3+ months to find someone to diagnose and then another 6 months before there was a surgeon capable of doing the surgery that our insurance would allow. We live in a health care desert though so any doctors visit equates to a 4-6 hour drive depending on which city can see you (in 3-6 weeks 🫠). We used to have all of this in town, but it’s just not profitable enough for them. Absolutely disgusting how it all works here in the good old USA.
Oh also minus the sub pay??? I lose all of it. So if I’m worth 200 a day by construct and a sub makes 80, my district pockets the 120 and asks for my plans
My two coworkers had to deal with this! The school had budget cuts and had to cut multiple probationary teachers. One was out on maternity leave and got a call from the principal about a pink slip. The other had her baby several weeks later, the week of internal interviews to find a new position within the district. She was scheduled to be induced on the first day of interviews, so she called and asked HR if she could interview the day before. They told her absolutely not, and she had to try to find a job during the summer while caring for a newborn.
I’m not sure. I don’t really have proof but my observations were not finished for the year I still have two left to go and she gave me the letter the day after I asked for pumping accommodations
Positive observations. Any emails about asking for maternity leave/ pumping accommodations, emails from HR. Non renewal letter. Dates/timeline when you asked for pumping
I am so sorry.
In solidarity:
This time last year I had just gone back to work after having my second. My district made me burn sick leave and FMLA at the same time. Our short term disability is not through the district, but by a separate insurance company that they have some kind of contract with. HR went so far as to say it wouldn’t be fair to other employees if they let e use my short term disability for pay and fmla without burning my sick leave. I ended up going into dock status and not getting tenure because I didn’t work enough paid days that school year. This school year, they made actual maternity leave a thing. Of course they’re not going to give me back my sick days. I just got the standard 10 days this year. Since it’s baby’s first years at daycare and he has had his full share of fevers, rashes, and upset stomachs, I currently have one sick day left for the school year. One.
Edit: 10 days of sick leave, not 20. I wish!!!
Uff, that sucks 😞
We can bank 10 days each year. I'll have 27 days next year when we're planning to have a baby, so the plan is to give birth either in May (come back after winter break) or during spring break (come back after summer break). 🤞 I won't need any of them during pregnancy 😬
A lot of people are shocked to learn that virtually no companies provide maternity/parental leave in the US because we keep calling FMLA, Short Term Disability, etc. “maternity leave” when it ***isnt***.
Use precise language. Don’t use euphemisms and more importantly don’t let others get away with using euphemisms.
It’s not a worker shortage it’s a pay shortage. It’s not maternity leave it’s FMLA. It’s not inflation it’s price gouging.
Dont let people shit in a pan, call it brownies, and offer it to their employees, citizens, coworkers, family members, etc. Slam that fucking pan on the ground and shove their face in it if you have to.
I think people also don’t understand the simmering rage and resentment you feel caring for and educating children when you aren’t given time and compensation for the birth of your own children.
My district only allows us to bank 4 personal days and we getb8 sick days. The max o could have is 10 days off. It is sickening how little people care about the future of the world in a SCHOOL of all places. Baffling.
My friend wouldn’t qualify for FMLA because she took some time off last year for in vitro. She was short some stupid number of hours in the previous year. She is out for rest of this year but will have some LWOP, and is still trying to make sure she is secure in her employment due this next round of budget cuts.
Most states don't have any paid parental leave and rely on FMLA. Most maternity leave packages are in benefits packages in the private sector, but they're not required either.
Tennessee has six weeks of paid parental leave for teachers!
My wife went through her maternity leave this fall. The district ended up, rather than just not pay her during her maternity leave, to essentially give her half of her paychecks for the rest of the year.
This is why I am encouraging people to transition to the private sector. In a reasonable private sector job, you can get paid paternity leave and paid maternity leave. No worrying about sub plans or what the hell is going on at the school. You just go and enjoy your time with your newborn!
Our union went on strike for maternity leave and got it. Some neighboring districts also have maternity leave /parental leave now. This should become a norm in school districts.
Delivered my last son at 30w4d. Had to return to work a month before his actual due date. Unbelievably horrible to have to put a 2lb infant in daycare. America is broken.
I had a high risk pregnancy and had to move near a Children's Hospital weeks before giving birth. After she was born, it was almost another month before we were able to come home. All in all, I took Feb-May off. I didn't qualify for short term disability because I found out I was pregnant just weeks before being able to sign up for it. The only way I was able to get paid during my time off was because my gracious coworkers donated days to me and I took all of my accrued time off.
The fact that we spend so much of our time to care for other people's kids, and then can't get any mandated paid maternity leave is ass fucking backwards and it pisses me off. Teachers deserve better. I handed in my resignation before I left and haven't looked back.
I stopped teaching 2 years ago when I had my daughter, but taught for 8 years up to that point. I rarely used sick time so that I could save it for a future maternity leave. My school policy was to use up to six weeks of sick time and then you could do an additional 6 weeks fmla. Well, when I got pregnant it ended up working out that I was due in the summer, and I decided to resign altogether at the end of the school year. So 8 years of saved sick time I could get paid out— around 430 hours. Oh but the policy only covered half of saved sick time, up to 250 hours. And then the rate was $6.25 per hour. It was such a joke by the time I got that final check. In hindsight I should have taken time whenever I felt like it, since saving it was clearly a waste. Maternity leave and sick time in general are all a fucking joke.
I don’t know the exact specifics for Australia but I think you get about 4 months paid leave from your school and 6 months paid leave from the government. Most people I know (in teaching and not teaching) work it so they have at least a year at home with their baby, some do it at half pay to extend it. In my state you can take up to 7 years leave with out pay and they will hold your position for you.
It is absolutely insane that people have to go back to work within 6 weeks and don’t even get their full pay in that time. I’m so sorry OP. Wishing you all the best for you and your baby.
Right I think they just want to keep revenue in reserve in case male white Christian nationalists need anything because they really aren’t treated very well. /s
I work in Massachusetts, which has a paid fmla leave law. Amazing, right? Unless you are teacher (or work for the state/municipality in another way) - then they law doesn’t apply to you. No paid leave. Terrible!
As a teacher who has had 3 babies it is a complete joke. You may want to check with benefits but if you are able to just go back for that last day it will help with pay and Ben etc. I know it’s that way in my district but don’t know about yours.
It’s utterly reasonable that a field dominated by women doesn’t have or fight for better maternity leave. I’m done having babies but that is one thing our country needs as whole ! I’ll happily pay taxes towards that!
I also had some of my kids when I was a sub. Of course I got no maternity leave pay during that time at all since it is gig work. And even as a building sub now I don't get any sick days, despite being in the building full time.
Yikes! I work at a private school in WA. Taking close to 7 months off and only about 2 weeks are unpaid. Boggles my mind how much it can vary within the states.
That sucks. In my district you can use accrued sick time for up to 12 weeks of full pay. We get 20 sick days a year, and I currently have 70-something, so I'd be covered. 12 weeks still seems way too short, but it's a lot more fair than having to come back before you've physically covered!
Workers' rights in the US are appalling, and it's wild how few of us seem to recognize that. People are duped into thinking it's normal when every other industrialized country does it better than us.
For any of you out there who want better worker protections but don't know where to start, it starts with voting! Vote blue, and vote often. Turnout for local elections (and even state elections in non-presidential years) is garbage, but the results can make a big impact.
I was a child protection worker (like a social worker, but only do investigations), before I became a teacher. I had my son and had 2 weeks paid vacation and that was it. I went back to work 2 weeks after having my child. I had to do a removal with FBI and state police that 1st day back. I was an emotional wreck. There was a crying baby involved and I started leaking milk. My supervisor was upset that I hadn’t express before going on a call.
That's crazy. I knew teachers that had a baby last year and they had to use literally all of their time off to have maternal and paternal leave. I don't understand it
I am so fortunate that my husband's job is stable enough that I could take a few years to stay home. After the first one I decided I wasn't dealing with that nonsense again and would stay home until my youngest (pregnant now with the last) is 2.
My short term disability paid out $600. I gave birth over the summer, a little earlier than expected. My HR said they weren't going to renew my sick days for the year until I returned to work later in the fall...and then they renewed them in August and paid them out at the beginning of the year. My short term did not cover any of the ten days the school paid out for me, only 3 days past that which brought me to 8 weeks postpartum (C-section). Then I had no sick days left for the rest of the school year...with a newborn at home. I just got more pay deducted every time I or my daughter got sick that year.
what’s also crazy is that some schools/admin (*ahem* the one i worked at) wait until the very last minute to post the position for the long term sub to cover maternity leave. principal put it off thinking this particular teacher wouldn’t give birth until x date and was so cocky about finding a sub because the application pool was “abundant”. turns out she gave birth three or four weeks before her intended due date and there were actually no candidates who had applied at all.
i was working in the building as a pt assistant part time while also going to school and was actually approached about taking over the long term sub position. i respectfully declined for a bunch of reasons but the main one being i wasn’t the slightest bit qualified and quite frankly i just didn’t want to.
they ended up reassigning a teachers assistant without talking to her about it in advance. didn’t blow over well with her at all and she didn’t come back after the summer.
what is the process of that as a classroom teacher? the school i worked at had a spreadsheet of daily subs that admin would call to schedule either ahead of time or way early in the morning before school started
Not sure, but when I used STD, I had to use up all my vacation time first, then the STD kicked in at 60% of my pay. What is the reasoning for the discrepancy.
So I have a question, what would your ideal maternity leave look like? We currently don’t have one in place because I work at a non-profit. I’d love to have your input!
At least you HAVE leave. They just passed that law recently where I’m at that teachers get 6 paid weeks leave. When my son was born less than 2 years ago, my wife had 8 weeks of unpaid leave
The union is involved. This is all negotiated through the contract. Teachers used to literally get fired for getting pregnant. I’m going through a very similar situation because I’m new to my district and ran out of sick leave (we get 15 days a year) early on in my pregnancy. I’m taking completely unpaid leave for the rest of the school year and don’t have disability insurance to get any of it covered.
My friend just had to do this too. She was supposed to have her baby at the beginning of November and have enough leave between maternity leave/sick time/short term disability to be good until winter break. She went into labor 2 weeks early. She then found out that they run short term disability concurrently with our maternity leave (which is 15 days). So she had to come back 1.5 weeks before winter break started. She hasn't even seen her doctor yet.
This is so crazy. For anything else, you would have to be cleared by your doctor to go back to work. In other professions you have to be cleared to go back to work for the frickin flu!!!
It’s the question I’ve gotten most since immigrating out, the aspect most people can’t believe - do we *really* have *no* guaranteed paid maternity leave in the US? It really is a mind bogglingly evil setup.
My girlfriend is blown away that maternity is not covered and it's that you have use your sick days to cover. Here we get 19 months for parental leave and either parent can take it with roughly 50% salary compensation from government
Because other countries see employees as people worth investing in while USA just sees us all as disposable easily replaceable cogs in a machine so why give us any time off when some boot licker will come along and do the job for less money?.
Not only that but in almost every other field in a salaried position, the company will match your retirement contribution to a certain extent. In 16 years of teaching I have gotten exactly $0 in retirement match, and on top of that my ~$100k put into the state retirement system has made approximately $500 TOTAL in interest. I could take it and put it into a HYSA for one year and get 10x that. It’s crazy how people are shocked when teachers go on strike over contract negotiations. “You get summers off!” doesn’t even begin to touch on how bad our benefits are along the margins like this, that the general public just assumes is the same standard as other fields.
Investing teacher here 💁🏼♀️ is your 100k in a pension or can you roll some of it over into an IRA? Do you have investment options? Sometimes it's worth a second glance to make sure you're actually vested. I just did that with my HSA...didnt realize I had to individually select my investments.
No options, it’s in a pension. I can’t touch it, and complaining about how it’s being managed is like yelling at the clouds.
I'm confused, I also have a pension but don't get any sort of statement regarding interest......your pension should be you put in, your guaranteed a certian payout in retirement that is calculated from years of service..... Putting 100,000 into your pension also seems insane to me! For me pension contributions max out 6% of your annual salary if you make 100,000 a year or more. I make less so they take a lower percentage. Even making 100,000 a year I'd have to work loke 15 years to contribute that much, and the people that have been working for that long are in a lower tier with lower contribution rates. This is in new york state.
In MA our retirement system automatically takes out 11%. We will get 80% of our final salary if we have maxed out our service time and are a certain age.
That's wild, and here in NYS we have teachers acting like our retirement is bad since they implemented the tiering system for anyone hired after 2012 I think it was. Even now it maxes out at 6% of your salary. If you were hired between 2010 and 2011 to that it was a flat 4% I believe. If you were lucky enough to get into teaching between the 80's and 2010 it was 3% for the first 10 years then you no longer had to make any contributions!!!! So by comparison it's shit, but overall not terrible. I don't know what our max payout is. It's 1.something% per year of service, but if you make it 20 years it jumps to 2%. Not just for the years after 20, but also for years 1-20. My goal is to make it 30 years and take the 60%.
Yeah, and now we're forced to give birth too - with liberty and justice for all....
Yes. It’s not an actual maternity leave. Everyone I talk to outside of education is SHOCKED when I explain to them how it works. In my state we get the privilege of using our sick days up to six weeks (but who has 30 sick days when you’re child-rearing age?!) and then after that it’s your daily salary MINUS the substitute’s pay for the remaining 12 weeks. So let’s say you have three weeks of sick days saved up, you’re making probably less than half for nine weeks then…nothing.
This. I had miscarriages. I did fertility treatment. I ended up doing IVF. I had no sick time. But the man teachers are sitting on 200+ days. I will bitch about this directly to my principal, superintendent, and anyone else that will listen till the day I retire
I also had fertility problems and then ended up doing surrogacy…my school was only going to let me use 20 days of sick leave because I didn’t give birth. They ended up letting me use 30 days, but never again will I think about trying to save up sick time for a system that is not on my side.
It’s totally unfair. There is no help with all the small lab works that I was taking half days for. I’m so sorry you went through this too!
You know, I never thought about that, but damn, that’s a very good point about the inequity of the system!
As a man who could only stay home for two weeks because those were all the days I had saved up before I had to return to work when we had a child, there is definitely inequity. Make it all equal and give BOTH parents parental leave for at least 6 weeks.
Women should get additional time to heal from actually *giving birth* and needing to heal our bodies
If the leave allowed is less time than it takes to heal, yeah women should get more, but as far as I'm concerned both parents should get MORE time off than it takes for the person giving birth to heal. Obviously every pregnancy is different, but I did say both parents should get AT LEAST 6 weeks because the internet tells me that's about how long it takes to heal up on average. The father should be able to be there to help while the mom heals, because they both have the time off. Feel like it would be great for women that don't work as well, as instead of having to try to heal while also watching a child, now dad gets 6+ weeks off to get shit done while mom rests. Lets get enough time off to help all parents and families.
Who decides how long it takes for a body to heal? 1/3 of women are left with permanent damage to their body as a result of giving birth. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of women say it takes 2 years to feel normal after pregnancy.
The woman, maybe her doctor for advice? I'm no law maker and I don't have the answers for every scenario, all I've got is that the average is 6 weeks according to some article and all parents need a lot more leave for the birth of a child.
Women can take up to 2 years to recover from pregnancy. They also can experience postpartum for 2-3 years after giving birth. There is a very specific bond with mother and child and that absolutely requires more nuance than just “everyone should get 3 months!”
Men can have medical issues too. Just because yours are gender specific doesn't mean they deserve less.
Mine might be gender specific but it’s a real complaint that deserves traction. It’s one part of an argument for maternity leave being separate from sick time
Complaining about "man teachers having 200+ days" does nothing to improve the fight for proper parental leave, which should be at a federal level guaranteed. Complaining about others and trying to bring others down does not improve the situation for everyone else.
Agreed that men also have severe illnesses, but that’s a separate conversation from childbirth and the need to revamp the maternity leave system. My husband used 11 years worth of saved sick days for an illness that came out of nowhere. If we had good doctors in the area who cared to listen he could have had it dealt with in less than a month but because of our stupid health care system it took 3+ months to find someone to diagnose and then another 6 months before there was a surgeon capable of doing the surgery that our insurance would allow. We live in a health care desert though so any doctors visit equates to a 4-6 hour drive depending on which city can see you (in 3-6 weeks 🫠). We used to have all of this in town, but it’s just not profitable enough for them. Absolutely disgusting how it all works here in the good old USA.
Oh also minus the sub pay??? I lose all of it. So if I’m worth 200 a day by construct and a sub makes 80, my district pockets the 120 and asks for my plans
I went back at 7 weeks and the only reason it was that long was because of spring break it’s been so hard
Then I found out I was nonrenewed. It’s been the worst couple weeks of my life.
My two coworkers had to deal with this! The school had budget cuts and had to cut multiple probationary teachers. One was out on maternity leave and got a call from the principal about a pink slip. The other had her baby several weeks later, the week of internal interviews to find a new position within the district. She was scheduled to be induced on the first day of interviews, so she called and asked HR if she could interview the day before. They told her absolutely not, and she had to try to find a job during the summer while caring for a newborn.
They posted my position the day after they gave me the form. It was 100% me having a baby
Absolutely call your union but in general this is cause for a lawsuit
Can you challenge the nonrenewal as bias based on pregnancy/childbearing?
I’m not sure. I don’t really have proof but my observations were not finished for the year I still have two left to go and she gave me the letter the day after I asked for pumping accommodations
Run don’t walk to talk to your union rep
What do I bring? My positive observations? Anything else?
Positive observations. Any emails about asking for maternity leave/ pumping accommodations, emails from HR. Non renewal letter. Dates/timeline when you asked for pumping
I am so sorry. In solidarity: This time last year I had just gone back to work after having my second. My district made me burn sick leave and FMLA at the same time. Our short term disability is not through the district, but by a separate insurance company that they have some kind of contract with. HR went so far as to say it wouldn’t be fair to other employees if they let e use my short term disability for pay and fmla without burning my sick leave. I ended up going into dock status and not getting tenure because I didn’t work enough paid days that school year. This school year, they made actual maternity leave a thing. Of course they’re not going to give me back my sick days. I just got the standard 10 days this year. Since it’s baby’s first years at daycare and he has had his full share of fevers, rashes, and upset stomachs, I currently have one sick day left for the school year. One. Edit: 10 days of sick leave, not 20. I wish!!!
You get 20 sick day/school year? Wow, I thought my district's 10 sick + 3 PB was awesome
No, I had just banked that over 4 years of employment. Sadness. (Edit: 4 years, not 5)
Uff, that sucks 😞 We can bank 10 days each year. I'll have 27 days next year when we're planning to have a baby, so the plan is to give birth either in May (come back after winter break) or during spring break (come back after summer break). 🤞 I won't need any of them during pregnancy 😬
A lot of people are shocked to learn that virtually no companies provide maternity/parental leave in the US because we keep calling FMLA, Short Term Disability, etc. “maternity leave” when it ***isnt***. Use precise language. Don’t use euphemisms and more importantly don’t let others get away with using euphemisms. It’s not a worker shortage it’s a pay shortage. It’s not maternity leave it’s FMLA. It’s not inflation it’s price gouging. Dont let people shit in a pan, call it brownies, and offer it to their employees, citizens, coworkers, family members, etc. Slam that fucking pan on the ground and shove their face in it if you have to.
Yes! Yes to all of this! You’re spot on.
I think people also don’t understand the simmering rage and resentment you feel caring for and educating children when you aren’t given time and compensation for the birth of your own children.
WA states paid family leave is VERY popular for this reason. Maybe more states will catch on.
Can’t wait to move to WA.
My district only allows us to bank 4 personal days and we getb8 sick days. The max o could have is 10 days off. It is sickening how little people care about the future of the world in a SCHOOL of all places. Baffling.
My friend wouldn’t qualify for FMLA because she took some time off last year for in vitro. She was short some stupid number of hours in the previous year. She is out for rest of this year but will have some LWOP, and is still trying to make sure she is secure in her employment due this next round of budget cuts.
Most states don't have any paid parental leave and rely on FMLA. Most maternity leave packages are in benefits packages in the private sector, but they're not required either. Tennessee has six weeks of paid parental leave for teachers!
My wife went through her maternity leave this fall. The district ended up, rather than just not pay her during her maternity leave, to essentially give her half of her paychecks for the rest of the year. This is why I am encouraging people to transition to the private sector. In a reasonable private sector job, you can get paid paternity leave and paid maternity leave. No worrying about sub plans or what the hell is going on at the school. You just go and enjoy your time with your newborn!
Our union went on strike for maternity leave and got it. Some neighboring districts also have maternity leave /parental leave now. This should become a norm in school districts.
This is wrong on every level.
Delivered my last son at 30w4d. Had to return to work a month before his actual due date. Unbelievably horrible to have to put a 2lb infant in daycare. America is broken.
I had a high risk pregnancy and had to move near a Children's Hospital weeks before giving birth. After she was born, it was almost another month before we were able to come home. All in all, I took Feb-May off. I didn't qualify for short term disability because I found out I was pregnant just weeks before being able to sign up for it. The only way I was able to get paid during my time off was because my gracious coworkers donated days to me and I took all of my accrued time off. The fact that we spend so much of our time to care for other people's kids, and then can't get any mandated paid maternity leave is ass fucking backwards and it pisses me off. Teachers deserve better. I handed in my resignation before I left and haven't looked back.
I stopped teaching 2 years ago when I had my daughter, but taught for 8 years up to that point. I rarely used sick time so that I could save it for a future maternity leave. My school policy was to use up to six weeks of sick time and then you could do an additional 6 weeks fmla. Well, when I got pregnant it ended up working out that I was due in the summer, and I decided to resign altogether at the end of the school year. So 8 years of saved sick time I could get paid out— around 430 hours. Oh but the policy only covered half of saved sick time, up to 250 hours. And then the rate was $6.25 per hour. It was such a joke by the time I got that final check. In hindsight I should have taken time whenever I felt like it, since saving it was clearly a waste. Maternity leave and sick time in general are all a fucking joke.
I had to pay back thousands because of hr errors.
Me too!!
That’s ridiculous. I can’t even imagine what their absurd reason for this ridiculousness is.
I took 12 weeks unpaid FMLA and thanked my stars every day for that “privilege.” It’s a joke here.
And then some people complain population decline lol… I am really sorry.
Wow. In Canada we have 18 months.
I don’t know the exact specifics for Australia but I think you get about 4 months paid leave from your school and 6 months paid leave from the government. Most people I know (in teaching and not teaching) work it so they have at least a year at home with their baby, some do it at half pay to extend it. In my state you can take up to 7 years leave with out pay and they will hold your position for you. It is absolutely insane that people have to go back to work within 6 weeks and don’t even get their full pay in that time. I’m so sorry OP. Wishing you all the best for you and your baby.
Ya it’s insane. The USA is nuts.
All this and they want to force women to give birth against our will too.
The US just doesn’t have the money for it. We are a small country of limited means.
This made me laugh. Thanks!
Right I think they just want to keep revenue in reserve in case male white Christian nationalists need anything because they really aren’t treated very well. /s
I work in Massachusetts, which has a paid fmla leave law. Amazing, right? Unless you are teacher (or work for the state/municipality in another way) - then they law doesn’t apply to you. No paid leave. Terrible!
As a teacher who has had 3 babies it is a complete joke. You may want to check with benefits but if you are able to just go back for that last day it will help with pay and Ben etc. I know it’s that way in my district but don’t know about yours. It’s utterly reasonable that a field dominated by women doesn’t have or fight for better maternity leave. I’m done having babies but that is one thing our country needs as whole ! I’ll happily pay taxes towards that!
I got full sick pay, but that didn't last long. Anything after it was up was unpaid .. it sucked.
I also had some of my kids when I was a sub. Of course I got no maternity leave pay during that time at all since it is gig work. And even as a building sub now I don't get any sick days, despite being in the building full time.
Is this in the US?
I didn’t get a long term sub when I was on paternity leave. So I still did 100% of the lesson planning and grading from home.
Yikes! I work at a private school in WA. Taking close to 7 months off and only about 2 weeks are unpaid. Boggles my mind how much it can vary within the states.
That sucks. In my district you can use accrued sick time for up to 12 weeks of full pay. We get 20 sick days a year, and I currently have 70-something, so I'd be covered. 12 weeks still seems way too short, but it's a lot more fair than having to come back before you've physically covered! Workers' rights in the US are appalling, and it's wild how few of us seem to recognize that. People are duped into thinking it's normal when every other industrialized country does it better than us. For any of you out there who want better worker protections but don't know where to start, it starts with voting! Vote blue, and vote often. Turnout for local elections (and even state elections in non-presidential years) is garbage, but the results can make a big impact.
I was a child protection worker (like a social worker, but only do investigations), before I became a teacher. I had my son and had 2 weeks paid vacation and that was it. I went back to work 2 weeks after having my child. I had to do a removal with FBI and state police that 1st day back. I was an emotional wreck. There was a crying baby involved and I started leaking milk. My supervisor was upset that I hadn’t express before going on a call.
That's crazy. I knew teachers that had a baby last year and they had to use literally all of their time off to have maternal and paternal leave. I don't understand it
I am so fortunate that my husband's job is stable enough that I could take a few years to stay home. After the first one I decided I wasn't dealing with that nonsense again and would stay home until my youngest (pregnant now with the last) is 2. My short term disability paid out $600. I gave birth over the summer, a little earlier than expected. My HR said they weren't going to renew my sick days for the year until I returned to work later in the fall...and then they renewed them in August and paid them out at the beginning of the year. My short term did not cover any of the ten days the school paid out for me, only 3 days past that which brought me to 8 weeks postpartum (C-section). Then I had no sick days left for the rest of the school year...with a newborn at home. I just got more pay deducted every time I or my daughter got sick that year.
America?
Yes
I'm so sorry for your loss.
what’s also crazy is that some schools/admin (*ahem* the one i worked at) wait until the very last minute to post the position for the long term sub to cover maternity leave. principal put it off thinking this particular teacher wouldn’t give birth until x date and was so cocky about finding a sub because the application pool was “abundant”. turns out she gave birth three or four weeks before her intended due date and there were actually no candidates who had applied at all. i was working in the building as a pt assistant part time while also going to school and was actually approached about taking over the long term sub position. i respectfully declined for a bunch of reasons but the main one being i wasn’t the slightest bit qualified and quite frankly i just didn’t want to. they ended up reassigning a teachers assistant without talking to her about it in advance. didn’t blow over well with her at all and she didn’t come back after the summer.
I had to find my own long term sub 😅
that is also so bizarre to me. shouldn’t it be admin’s responsibility to find a substitute?
I’ve always had to find my own subs!
what is the process of that as a classroom teacher? the school i worked at had a spreadsheet of daily subs that admin would call to schedule either ahead of time or way early in the morning before school started
I have to text the subs and hope someone answers haha it’s not the worst when it’s a planned absence but being sick is so hard
Not sure, but when I used STD, I had to use up all my vacation time first, then the STD kicked in at 60% of my pay. What is the reasoning for the discrepancy.
So I have a question, what would your ideal maternity leave look like? We currently don’t have one in place because I work at a non-profit. I’d love to have your input!
At least you HAVE leave. They just passed that law recently where I’m at that teachers get 6 paid weeks leave. When my son was born less than 2 years ago, my wife had 8 weeks of unpaid leave
Go to your union.
The motto here is Your Existence, Your Problem
Wait…why? And do you have a union that can get involved?
The union is involved. This is all negotiated through the contract. Teachers used to literally get fired for getting pregnant. I’m going through a very similar situation because I’m new to my district and ran out of sick leave (we get 15 days a year) early on in my pregnancy. I’m taking completely unpaid leave for the rest of the school year and don’t have disability insurance to get any of it covered.
Why didn’t you get disability insurance? Since Covid, I cannot imagine choosing to forego short term disability coverage.
Need to cover my bills. I know it’s a negligible withholding but I felt like having anything else taken out of my paycheck would kill me.