Determine Your Paid Leave Time

One of our top questions is, “How much leave can I take and what will be paid?” Follow the steps below to answer that question for your situation:

1. Go into Employee Self Service (you must be on a PPS network) to determine your current leave balances. (You can also get that information from your last pay stub.)

2. Understand the order that your paid leave balances will be used.

a. To care for a family member:  family illness leave, sick leave, personal time, vacation (if applicable), reserve sick leave*

b. Employee own medical:  sick leave, personal time, vacation (if applicable), reserve sick leave*

c. Birth/adoption/parental: family illness leave, sick leave, personal time, vacation (if applicable), reserve sick leave*

*Reserve Sic Leave is paid at 2/3 pay

3. Add up the total number of eligible accrued paid leave hours you can use. Divide this by the hours/day you work. This will give you the actual number of paid days you can use during your leave.

a. For example, say a full-time employee has the following balances:

100 hours of sick leave

40 hours of reserve sick leave (paid at 2/3 pay)

24 hours of Personal/Emergency leave

80 hours of Vacation time

244 total hours divided by 8 hours per day = 30.5 days

4. Refer to the school calendar that is applicable to your role. Exclude days that are not part of your work year such as spring break, winter break, etc., if applicable. Also exclude paid holidays when counting your paid leave usage.

There! It took some calculating but now you know how many paid days you will have. Please understand that employees are required to use any paid leave balances prior to going into an unpaid status in most situations.

Note that there are sick leave banks available to certain groups of employees under specific circumstances. Your own personal paid leave must be exhausted before you can use any Sick Leave Bank donations.

Determine how long your District provided health and welfare benefits will last.

The two things that protect your insurance are paid leave time and FMLA/OFLA. Read on to learn how these interact.

Once you understand how long your paid leave will last, you can then calculate how long your insurance benefits will last. To earn insurance benefits you must be paid for at least half the workdays of the calendar month. Thus, the month that you run out of paid leave, if you are in an unpaid status for more than half the work days in that month, your insurance will cease at the end of that month.

This gets more complicated if you are on a qualified Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Leave or Oregon Family Medical Leave (OFLA). Under FMLA and OFLA the District is required to continue your health insurance so your benefits will continue until either your paid status or your approved FMLA or OFLA leave ends – whichever is later.

The following two examples may help clarify:

Example 1

* An employee is on an approved FMLA leave from 8/24/18 to 12/31/18

* The employee runs out of paid time on 11/8/18 meaning they were paid for 6 days in November and unpaid for 14 days

* The employee’s FMLA protection ends on 11/28/18

* Benefits will cease on 12/1/18

Example 2

* An employee is on an approved FMLA/OFLA leave from 8/24/18 to 12/31/18

* The employee runs out of paid time on 12/11/18 meaning they were paid for 7 days in December and unpaid for 3 days due to winter break

* The employee’s FMLA/OFLA protection ends on 11/28/18

* The employee will maintain benefits until the end of their leave