MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – EAGnews has published a number of stories on frivolous spending in school districts where taxpayers foot the bill for school employee travel, but it was not until early this year that we began to examine just how much they spend on union-negotiated sick day policies.

Fortunately, a Minneapolis reporter also found this topic worth writing about when he looked into the unused sick day compensation at Minneapolis Public Schools.

Patrick Rehkamp recently wrote an article published at twincities.com highlighting the somewhat abnormal spending practices of school districts such as Minneapolis Public Schools.

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While the district is anticipating a $5 million deficit for its next budget, since 2009 it has also paid out $10.3 million for unused sick days to departing employees, according to the news site.

Supporters of the unused sick day compensation policies claim that it is an incentive for teachers who are overworked and underpaid. If that is the case, perhaps they could have used some of the money paid out to hire more teachers and focus on student needs.

Devin Foley, president of the nonprofit group Better Ed, estimates that the $10.3 million that the district has paid out in unused sick day compensation could have paid for the salaries and benefits for more than 100 teachers, according to the news site.

It seems as though the money would have been better spent in a way which focuses on the students, especially considering the student proficiency data for Minneapolis Public Schools is anything but impressive.

The report card released by the Minnesota Department of Education shows that the overall student proficiency for students in Minneapolis Public Schools falls below the state average in all three categories tested (Math, Reading, and Science).

Only 43.1 percent of students in the Minneapolis district tested as proficient in Math in 2014, compared to a state average of 60.5 percent. 42.4 percent were proficient in Reading (state average was 58.8 percent), and only 34.1 percent were proficient in Science (state average was 53.4 percent).

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If the real reason behind compensating teachers is because they are underworked, then maybe the money that went towards all of the unused sick day compensation would have been better spent by hiring more teachers to help with that load. That money would have benefited students more as well.

It is not just the teachers who benefit from this policy either, but also principals and administrators.

Rehkamp’s article listed three of the district’s largest recent payouts. The first is Steven Couture who left his position as principal of Anishinabe Academy in July 2012 and received $50,413 for his unused sick time. Now he is a principal at the American Indian Magnet School in St. Paul Public Schools and is earning $123,267 a year.

He is followed by Linda Nelson, who received $67,658 when she left her position as principal of South High School in July 2009, pulling in a salary of $116,187. Althea Fernandez placed third receiving $59,255 for her unused sick time when she left her post as Sanford Middle School’s assistant principal in June 2012. Her final salary was $111,965.

Practices such as the one in the Minneapolis district that allow departing employees to cash out unused sick time are becoming more rare. In fact, in his article Rehkamp noted that only 4 percent of employers let this happen, according to a 2014 survey performed by the national Society for Human Resource Management.

Minneapolis Public Schools is making strides in cutting back on their generous unused sick day compensation policy, but what the future holds is ultimately up to union negotiations.

“Over the past two to three negotiation cycles, the district has ‘successfully negotiated changes to the traditional sick leave cash-out benefit with many of our unions,’” Steven Barrett, the district’s human resource operations executive director said, according to the news site.

Unions should not be able to take $10.3 million in taxpayer dollars, and divert it to a policy that does not really benefit students in the first place, but costs the district a great deal of money.

It is encouraging that districts are moving in a direction away from the unused sick day compensation policies, but until changes are made, policies such as these continue to take money away from student needs and force districts to spend limited funds on policies that are found almost nowhere else in both the private and public sectors.