Hellobee Boards

Maternity leave sucks for teachers! Just had to put that out there. I'm in NYC and according to what I understand the only time FMLA doesn't apply is in the summer.

I think it depends on the district. I don't think my district counts breaks as part of the FMLA, but I don't know for sure. I know colleagues have said they got some extra time due to breaks, but that's also from people who had kids 7-8 years ago. A lot has changed since then.

I had my first child in sept and came back in January. In that time we had 5 days off (holidays, days off, snow days) and another 3 weeks of holiday time, none of which counted towards my leave time. My HR said that those days off are calculated into my yearly salary and, if I were working during that time, I would have gotten them "for free", so they couldn't "dock" me just because I was on mat leave.

@Boopers: wow. That's cold. It's pretty much implied but to put it in writing like that.

Actually none of this is right. I went round and round with my school district. If you google, or call the DOL, you will find that school districts CAN NOT run your FMLA time on weeks when you would normally not be at work. But it has to be a holiday that takes the majority of a week.

For example, if your district gives 2 days off for "winter break", then that's less than half time so that week still counts towards your 12 weeks FMLA. But if your district gives a full week for winter break, then it can NOT count toward your 12 FMLA weeks.

However, when I lived in Texas, the school district I worked for (a huge school district, who should know better) did this wrong. They were either clueless or intentionally swindling teachers out of their full leave.

@Anagram: wow. I haven't read your link yet but I can't wait to.

So I took 8 weeks off with my first child. I used up all my days (saved over 3 years!) so I could have pto. I had another child the next year so I had no days saved up, so I was docked my daily rate every day I was gone AND had a vacation day taken away from me the next year because 10 days off is based on working 187 days...which I didn't work. My maternity leave that year fell over some of Spring Break and Easter and those days were included in my mat leave 12 week eligibility.