Where’s the leave? McAllen school district struggles to meet COVID pay demand

The beginning of the spring school semester during a COVID-19 spike led to a flurry of new and renewed extended leave policies for staff at Hidalgo County districts who need to isolate for the coronavirus, policies that leave McAllen ISD employees with one question: Where’s ours? They don’t have one, and it doesn’t look like there’s any concrete plans to give them one anytime soon. The question for trustees is how exactly to pay for COVID leave for employees who burn through personal days and sick days because of the coronavirus. “From the information that I have gathered, it is a significant concern that it would dip into either fund balance, or in this case they’re talking ESSER funds — which as I mentioned, you would have to take something off the table in order to do it,” school board President Sam Saldivar said Tuesday.

Trustee Debbie Crane-Aliseda, citing decreasing enrollment and budgetary restrictions, put it in more blunt terms: The district has to figure out how to pay COVID leave “without bankrupting the school district.” Both of those trustees support COVID leave in theory, or at least having a conversation about it. Other districts in the county have managed to extend extra COVID leave, citing concerns over employees who have no more sick leave but must be absent because of exposure or infection to the coronavirus. There’s also a clear desire for some sort of COVID leave policy among McAllen teachers. An online AFT petition demanding pandemic protocol changes, among COVID leave, had over 500 signatures as of Saturday, but the group says those signatures haven’t elicited action from the district. “The thing is, the district keeps telling us there is no money to pay COVID days,” AFT President Sylvia Tanguma said. The district’s board still hasn’t officially discussed the financial burden tied to COVID-19 leave this year, but they did obliquely address that sort of leave Monday in a discussion about accelerating $2,000 of previously earmarked stipend payouts, an acceleration meant to help teachers dealing with pandemic hardships.