Philadelphia teachers protest policy they say punishes them for taking sick days
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Philadelphia teachers are pushing back on a policy that they say penalizes them when they take sick days.
Educators chanted and marched outside of the School District of Philadelphia holding signs expressing their frustration with a nearly 40-year-old policy unofficially known as the "3-5-7-9 policy."
"It penalizes them for using their sick leave," Mastbaum High School teacher Adam Blyweiss said.
Teachers are allowed 10 sick days a school year for themselves or to take care of a sick family member. But after their third "occurrence," either a single day or consecutive sick days, they'll have to meet with their principal, who writes a memo documenting the incident.
"I've gotten several different warnings for taking sick days that I've needed," Mastbaum High School Teacher Liam Kelly said. "And there's definitely times that I've been sick or I've had issues of family members being ill and I've second-guessed if I have to go to work or take the time I needed."
But teachers like Kelly said it doesn't stop there.
As teachers accumulate five, seven and nine sick days, memos advance from a warning to eventually an unsatisfactory incident report. It also could lead to recommended suspensions and meetings with the assistant superintendent.
"There's this threatening air about it, and we just want to be left alone to do our jobs and left alone to live our lives to the best way that we can," Blyweiss said.
In a statement, the School District of Philadelphia said in part: "The district has identified teacher attendance among the conditions for success we are tracking and on which we are focusing efforts to improve. ... The district has had guidelines for school leaders to monitor teacher attendance and provide support and intervention for many years. ... The goal of these conversations is to encourage attendance and provide support when needed, similar to encouragement and support we provide to students about their attendance."
Union representation is "included in this process" and discipline for poor attendance is "extremely rare," the district said in the statement, adding, "We offer many days of paid time off per year and no teacher should come to work when they are sick."
"The Talent Office, with consultation from the Academic Services division, will review our current processes after this school year to identify areas for improvement as we seek to promote staff attendance and wellness," the statement said.
"If no one is fired it's because we're too afraid to use our 10 days," Kelly said.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers presented the school board with a petition signed by 2,000 members calling on the district to update the policy.
Some of those members testified in front of the school board on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the school board said the issue is not something the board can take action on for now because it's a district policy.
"The policy shouldn't really be there," Blyweiss said. "It's something that casts a black cloud over our job."