TEXARKANA, Texas - Pleasant Grove Independent School District Board of Trustees approved a resolution to adjust employee sick leave due to confirmed COVID-related reasons between Jan 4 to May 28.
At its regular meeting Thursday night, Director of School Services Bill Harp said with the expiration of federal leave protections on Dec. 31, a financial emergency could negatively affect employees if they are required to miss work due to COVID.
Knowing that, the board extended the leave days to provide some insurance for teachers who come potentially down with COVID-19.
"If a teacher's child is exposed and comes down with coronavirus, under our rules, we're still being pretty aggressive with our quarantining and our diagnosis," Harp said. "And I do think that's been very successful. But in doing that, people are having to use their leave balances. So, what we're running into is some of our employees are in danger of going into the negative on their sick leave days. That would start costing them money every time they miss a day."
Harp gave an example of a teacher with kids in a local district who had a different family member come down COVID at three different times since the beginning of the year, causing this teacher to be quarantined three separate times.
"Through no fault of their own, this employee has missed several times," he said. "You can see how quickly it can pile up on one employee if they run out of their leave. There would be a big financial hit to our employees if we don't approve this resolution."
Harp said at this time last year, 20% of the district's absences were due to illness. This year, that number has risen to 41% because of COVID.
The only budget impact this decision will create would be a potential increase in payroll expenses for substitute teachers.
In other news from the meeting, the board approved a clean financial audit report by Wilf and Henderson P.C., as well as fund balance designations.
Superintendent Chad Pirtle reported that the number of students partaking in remote learning is down to 7.6%, after sitting at around 9% last month and starting the year off at over 20%.