Working from home doesn’t mean you should have to work while you are sick.
Educators need to take care of themselves, and nothing has changed about your access to contractual leave in Comprehensive Distance Learning. You still have access to sick leave, personal leave, and family leave. Remember that you cannot offer the best of yourself to students if you are not able to “be your best” due to illness or other pressing needs.
Whether or not your position allows you to get a substitute, you have the right to contractual leaves.
If you are a classroom educator, please utilize substitute educators when you need to take a leave. While you are taking care of your personal needs, utilizing substitute educators provides much needed work for our PAT substitute colleagues.
Substitute educators are trained to use Google, Canvas, Seesaw, and other platforms and are ready to work with your students. They can provide full-class instruction, small group instruction, attend your office hours, and provide support to students for asynchronous learning activities.
While we know it is not a perfect process (and PAT is working to have the District improve it), a classroom educator needs to follow these three steps to obtain a substitute educator:
- Put the absence into Absence Management and notify their school.
- Connect directly with the substitute educator so that the job can be assigned to them and so you can provide access to the Google classroom.
- If possible, put substitute lesson plans into Absence Management. (It is recommended that the educator also share these plans with the Principal’s Secretary or Building Administrator.)
Please take care of yourself, and utilize your colleagues who are substitute educators!