“I would have loved to stay home with my newborn child longer than I did, but it was financially impossible,” said Yoshi Salaverry, an English teacher at Berkeley High School. This situation is not uncommon in Berkeley Unified School District, where teachers’ salaries are further reduced when they take leave for the birth or adoption of their child.
“You’re only paid 25 percent of your salary while you’re on leave,” said Salaverry. “People may have this misconception that during parental leave, you’re receiving all the pay that you would normally get. Within the Berkeley Unified School District, that is not the case.”
Teachers at BUSD are given the choice of taking child rearing leave or parental leave, two different options which affect how long teachers can leave and how much they get paid.
Teachers who take child rearing days are given
“I would have loved to stay home with my newborn child longer than I did, but it was financially impossible,” said Yoshi Salaverry-Takei, an English teacher at Berkeley High School. This situation is a common one in Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), where teachers’ salaries are further reduced when they take leave for the birth or adoption of their child.
“You’re only paid 25 percent of your salary while you’re on leave,” said Salaverry-Takei. “People may have this misconception that during parental leave, you’re receiving all the pay that you would normally get. Within the Berkeley Unified School District, that is not the case.”
Teachers at BUSD are given the choice of taking child rearing leave or parental leave, two different options which affect how long teachers can leave and how much they get paid.
Teachers who take child rearing days are given
89 days off, with 25 percent of their usual salary. This leave begins the day the child is born or adopted, and any days taken before must be counted as sick leave.
During sick leave, the staff member is paid 100 percent of their normal salary. Full time teachers are given 11 sick days per year, and they can accumulate and save up throughout their years of teaching within BUSD. Teachers can use as much or as little of their sick leave as they want.
Alternatively, teachers can go on parental leave, an idea that was put into effect within the BUSD contract in 2022. Teachers who choose parental leave can only take 60 days off and have to exhaust all of their sick days, no matter how many they currently have.
This is a contrast to teachers who take child rearing leave and choose how many sick days they use up. Teachers taking parental leave then get paid the difference in between their salary and the substitute’s salary. Teachers can have input in who their substitute can be, but they can’t necessarily choose.
If any emergencies come up for teachers, “(Teachers) can request an extension of unpaid leave or if they are ill after the birth of their child, then they may be able to qualify for Pregnancy Disability or something,” said Lona Kelly, one of three human technicians at BUSD.
Most teachers find it difficult to comfortably support themselves and their newly growing families with only 25 percent of their salaries. This means that most teachers don’t take their 89 or 60 days off.
“(We’re being told that we’re) welcome to take as much time off as we want. (They’re) just not paying us … But it’s such a small fraction of your normal salary that it’s not really sustainable,” said Salaverry-Takei.
Glendaly Gascot-Rios, the director of human resources at BUSD had a similar experience when she had her child as a teacher. She had her first child four years into teaching, so she had a fair amount of sick days saved up. But when she had her second child the following year, she had fewer sick days to use. She was therefore paid less, as she had taken child rearing leave and was only paid 25 percent of her salary, when she could have been paid her full salary the amount of sick days she had.
“So I didn’t make any money. Twenty five percent of my salary, which was nothing. That’s, like, in diapers. So I had to depend on my husband,” Gascot-Rios said. “But this is a bigger problem with the state. They should cover women’s maternity leave for full pay. This is a state problem, that districts (and) public schools districts don’t have the money to cover… The federal government too should be involved.”
The current state of child rearing leave within BUSD may be negotiated if the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) comes to that conclusion.
Currently, BFT is debating whether to join the State Disability Insurance (SDI) program.
If the SDI program was to put teachers on their list, teachers would have a somewhat better income during their child rearing leave. The only obstacle: the price. If the teachers were to join the SDI, each teacher would have to pay 0.9 percent of their income yearly towards SDI.
John Becker, a teacher at Arts and Humanities Academy, English, has been teaching here since 2007 and has two children. “When my son was born … in August 2016, I had a lot of sick leave built up,” Becker said. “I was able to use my sick leave for child rearing leave which means that I got full pay.” Becker was able to be with his son for the first half of the school year until winter break.
His daughter was born a little over a year later, leaving him fewer sick days and was only able to take a month and a half off, rather than four to five months.
The first six months are, “the most important time in a baby’s life,” Becker said. “Just loving them up.”