By Peter Hancock
A new law in Illinois will make it easier for part-time school and college employees to receive paid family and medical leave.
Governor JB Pritzker signed a bill Tuesday lowering the threshold for those workers so that most will be eligible for the benefit after one year of employment.
“For too long, we have asked our school staff to provide exceptional care supporting kids in school without giving them the grace and flexibility to care for themselves and their families,” Pritzker said during a bill signing ceremony in Chicago. “It’s an omission that undermines the value of their work and the reality of their lives away from school grounds.”
Under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, workers are entitled to as many as 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period to care for a newborn child, to care for a close relative who has a serious health condition, or to deal with their own serious illness. That expands to 26 weeks to care for a child, spouse or parent who is a service member with a serious illness or injury.
To be eligible, though, the employee must have been employed for at least 12 months and worked at least 1,250 hours during the previous 12-month period. That’s a threshold that often can’t be met by many part-time school employees known as education support professionals, or ESPs. Those include paraprofessionals, secretaries, librarians, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and others, many of whom work only limited hours during the day, and often only when school is in session.
For those workers, House Bill 12 lowers that threshold to 1,000 hours of work during the previous 12 months. It applies to all employees of school districts, community colleges and public universities in Illinois. It will take effect January 1, 2022.
The bill passed both chambers of the General Assembly with strong bipartisan majorities – 95-14 in the House; 47-3 in the Senate.
“Gov. Pritzker is making sure that the people who keep our schools running smoothly have fair access to FMLA when they face illness and other life changing events within their families,” said Rep. Terra Costa Howard, D-Glen Ellyn, the bill’s chief sponsor in the House. “So I’m very proud that both sides of the aisle in the General Assembly stood up for Illinois’ dedicated school and college workers in our state.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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