California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law that will eliminate the three-year cap on the transfer of sick leave between districts at all education levels.
The Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), a professional membership association that advocates for California Community College faculty, sponsored the legislation. FACCC has more than 9,000 members within 72 districts and 114 colleges across the state.
“It’s a bill that came out of conversations we’ve had with our membership as well as other stakeholders,” said Stephanie Goldman, the external affairs director at FACCC.
The current law, according to Goldman, allowed faculty members three years to transfer their sick leave from one district to another. Originally, around five years ago, the sick leave cap was only one year.
As part of the transfer process, forms are supplied to faculty members and they submit them to the district from where they want to transfer the sick leave away. The district’s human resource office fills out the forms and note the number of sick days. Then the district reports the information to the California State Teacher’s Retirement System (CalSTRS) at the time of retirement.
CalSTRS provides retirement benefits for California’s public school educators from prekindergarten through community college.
Richard Hansen, an FACCC member and retired faculty member from the Foothill-DeAnza Community College District, believes that the transfer process makes sense for a part-time K-12 instructor but not for part-time community college faculty.
