Faculty Sick Leave Record Keeping

Faculty Sick Leave Record Keeping (UPPS 04.04.30)

Faculty accrue sick leave time, which provides possible options for extended sick leave for medical reasons, payout to a spouse if we pass away, donation to the sick leave pool to help others if we resign, etc. While these benefits are available to us, we also need to record sick time used during the course of our regular employment.

What to Record:

1.   The Texas Legislature’s Appropriations Act states that faculty earn sick leave and must use sick leave.

2.   Faculty sick leave time is calculated by a combination of time and events (unlike staff and chairs, who report all time missed from the planned 8 hour work day). For sick leave purposes, the faculty workday is divided into 1) time periods and 2) scheduled events for the workday. There are two time periods in each day - morning (midnight to noon) and afternoon or evening (noon to midnight). Each time period is considered four hours in length. Events include classes, office hours, scheduled meetings (such as PC, department, program, college meetings), and other assigned activities. All examples below reflect a faculty member who misses scheduled events due to illness/medical reasons.

3.   A faculty member missing all scheduled events in a day (whenever they occur) due to illness/medical reasons records 8 hours leave.

4.   A faculty member with events scheduled in the morning period and the afternoon/evening period who misses events in only one of the two periods records 4 hours leave.

5.   For a faculty member missing some but not all events in ONE of the time periods (morning or afternoon/evening): Divide the number of events missed by the number of events scheduled and multiply the result by four hours to determine the percentage of time missed. Example from the PPS: A professor attends a morning meeting and holds afternoon office hours, but does not teach the evening class due to illness. The professor reports 2 hours sick leave (1 afternoon/evening event missed, divided by 2 afternoon/evening events scheduled, multiplied by 4 = 2hours).

6.   A faculty member missing all scheduled events in a week reports 40 hours leave.

How to Report Sick Leave:

Need more information on the policy? Visit UPPS 04.04.30 at http://policies.txstate.edu/university-policies/04-04-30.html