WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The following news item was posted on September, 14, 2014, regarding the budget situation in the Palm Beach County, Florida, school district:

“Due to having less revenue from tax money, the district has to cut $65 million from its budget,” said the report from WPTV.com. “Over the next five years, the district will shed a total of $831 million from its budget. The district is making cuts by postponing construction budgets, maintenance work and non-construction budgets like the addition of new technology.

“The roofs at several schools were supposed to be replaced, including the roofs at Olympic Heights High School in Boca Raton and Okeeheelee Middle School. Principals at the schools confirm the schools have leaky roofs that need to be fixed.”

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Mike Burke, the chief operating officer of the district, seemed perplexed by the financial difficulties.

“We’re trying to make the best out of a bad situation,” Burke was quoted as saying. “It just becomes a question of what do we have to do to keep the lights on and the air conditioning running?”

One answer would be for Burke and the school board to closely inspect labor costs. That would require a close inspection of the district’s collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union, starting with the paid leave policies.

The alarming fact is that, in the 2013-14 budget year, the Palm Beach district paid a combined $53.7 million for sick leave pay, personal leave pay, substitute pay, and compensation for unused sick days.

The teachers union contract, which covers a high percentage of employees in the district, gives every covered full-time employee four paid sick days upon employment, and allows them to earn one paid sick day for every month of service.

A month of service is defined by working at least 11 days of any given month.

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One contract provision encourages the use of those sick days by making six of them personal leave days.

In 2013-14, Palm Beach County district employees took 76,140 sick days and 29,318 personal days, according to information provided by the district. That comes out to an average of 5.1 paid sick days per employee. In a district with 20,451 employees, that means a lot of money paid out for no work in a district that clearly can’t afford it.

The absent employees were paid a grand total of $25.5 million for days they were not at school.

Of course that means there was a need for a lot of substitute teachers, who do not work for free. The district shelled out $14.2 million in wages for subs in 2013-14.

The way the union CBA is written, even employees with good attendance cost the district a lot of money. All personnel covered by the contract are allowed to accrue an unlimited number of sick days, then cash them in at retirement at their final rate of pay. Unused sick days accumulated in other Florida school districts are transferable.

The Palm Beach County district spent a whopping $13.9 million on compensation for unused sick leave in 2013-14.

The same problem exists in other nearby large school district Florida, which have also been struggling with their budgets in recent years.

The paid leave contract language in the Broward County district is nearly identical to the language in Palm Beach County, and the financial results are similar. The huge district (the sixth largest in the nation) reported 83,656 sick days and 26,091 personal days taken specifically by teachers in 2013-14 (based on the presumption of an eight-hour work day).

That comes out to an average of 5.8 paid days of per teacher. Teachers were paid a combined $22 million for sick days and $6.7 million for personal days.

Broward County school officials did not reveal the amount of money they were forced to pay for substitute teachers or how much was spent on compensation for unused sick days.

In the smaller St. Lucie County school district, the sick day policies are also very similar to Palm Beach and Broward Counties, except employees are only allowed to use five days of sick leave, rather than six, for personal reasons, and unused sick days earned in other districts can’t be used for reimbursement.

The St. Lucie County district reported employees taking 38,842 paid sick days in 2013-14 and 13,054 personal days. With an estimated 8,050 employees, that comes out to an average of 6.4 paid days off per employee.

The district did not reveal the amount of salary paid to absent teachers, but reported $1.1 million in substitute teacher costs and $683,043 in compensation for unused sick days.