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Teachers should take fewer sick days

How would your employer react if, year after year, more than half of employees took at least ten sick days per year? What about if more than ten percent of employees were taking at least 20 sick days in a year? What if, during the years of such a rash of absences, production/performance at your place of business consistently missed goals; and the absence of all those employees was costing the business millions of dollars per year?

Would your employer reward employees with raises and an easing of the rules?

Of course not.

Would your employer have let the trend continue for four years, without an investigation and crackdown?

Again, no.

But in the wild, wonderful world of West Virginia public education, things are a little different.

According to research by the state Department of Education, during the last school year, 52.75 percent of teachers missed more than 10 days; before that, 52.46; before that, 51.44; and the year before that, 50.83. Stunningly, during the last school year, 10.9 percent of teachers took at least 20 extra days off.

Of course, the need for that many substitute teachers is costing counties millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, we have seen over and over that our schools are not meeting academic standards; and students are falling in line with the trend set by teachers, with 38 percent of schools not meeting standards of attendance for students.

Incredibly, Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, suggests one of the reasons more than half of our state’s teachers can’t make it to work 190 (or fewer) days per year is because incentives to do so have been taken away. It seems an obligation to the students in their classrooms is not enough incentive.

It is true that over the years the incentive to show up for work and therefore bank those days toward retirement or healthcare benefits has gone away.

“I want to get the percentage of those teachers that are missing more than 10 days because they don’t have an incentive to use their unused days for anything,” Lee told another media outlet. (Teachers under a 200-day contract get 12 days that can be used as sick time, plus three personal days.)

“The new ones coming into the profession feel like those are their days, their benefits,” state Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine told the same media outlet. “They get those 15 days every single year. They don’t see the value necessarily of seeing those days accumulate.”

Incredible. More than half of teachers in West Virginia public schools are missing a minimum of ten days per year; and a significant portion of those people (those not experiencing legitimate illnesses or caring for a family member for example — those without true need of the time off) simply do not see the value in doing their jobs. It is costing counties money, but more importantly, it is hurting our kids’ educational experiences.

If teachers abusing the system do not see the value in avoiding that, perhaps it is time to seek another line of work.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com

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