001Hi, my name is Chris Adler. I'm the director of human resources for the Sunbury Area School District. And what I'm going to do in this document is I'm just going to talk through the different handbook proposals for tonight's school board meeting on on May 26th, 2026. So, the first thing I'm going to start with is the all employee handbook changes. The one thing that I do want to talk about a little bit today is that within the changes that we're talking about, there's one I would say rather the complex one, and that has to do with how we are creating a more flexible paid time off language. And you're going to see that worked into a lot of different handbook changes here to make sure it's clear across the board because a lot of the
002PTO changes that we are proposing have kind of like fingers into other handbooks based on language usage. So, I'm going to go through many areas here and changes of handbooks, but my main focus is really going to be on that PTO language change because many of the other ones are more of cleaning things up and making sure that they fit with what our current reality is in different areas. So, the first place I'm going to start is the all employee handbook. And the first one is an adding an addition for the employee wellness clinic. So, adding a section 6.06. The reason we're adding this language is just to make it give some general information to clarify who can access the clinic. We have in our benefits information when we provide that to employees, but we
003felt like it was important to put this piece into a handbook because then people can find a quick reference to to understanding like who is actually eligible. So, that language is added in there for that reason. And you can see it there. It's not off of what what been doing in the past. It's just kind of memorializing it in our handbook. The next section I want to talk about is 6.16, which is a state recognition stipend. What we're doing is we're adding some clarifying language regarding pay upon retirement. One of the things that we've talked about with different employees is that we understand that when people resign, they don't actually finish out the year to get the stipends that are earned for the following year for returning. So we want to make sure that that
004was clear on resignation. And then we also want to make something clear with retiring is because we didn't want to penalize somebody that was retiring and they were on a milestone year of of a state stipend that they would forfeit that. So that didn't make sense to us. So we would then provide them with that service milestone. If they didn't reach a milestone, then you know, we wouldn't provide that like we typically wouldn't. But we have had some retirees hitting the milestone the year they were retiring. It just doesn't make sense to withhold that from them cuz they are finishing out the year. And the reason they're not returning is not because they're resigning, but because they're retiring. Okay, so this is the big one like I said that I want to talk about mostly.
005As you can see our current language on the left-hand side of section 9.02 talks about how we right now work with our paid time off. The biggest change that we're making is creating a more flexible language around the use of paid time off. As you can see our current language, you have to choose like a bucket like illness, medical, dental, funeral, bereavement, qualified time, or personal days. And sometimes one is that's confusing and two it's actually constricting. And that's not the intent or the spirit behind paid time off. So what we've been doing over the past year and actually this has been a conversation for years with our employee engagement work groups is we're trying to figure out a or we are proposing language that is more flexible for our employees to utilize PTO when
006needed. What we did was in our employee engagement work groups with each group, support staff, admin support admin, and professional educators is again, this conversation actually was brought up in the past few years and this year we got down to working on it. So, what I brought to the work groups was language that Middleton Cross Plains is utilizing. And the language here on the the new language is is very focused on how Middleton Cross Plains has done that. And you can see that we did it we did put some of our own like expectations in there because Middleton's language is obviously based on their their environment. So, we did tweak it a bit. Some of the things you'll see is we've taken away like the bucket idea of like picking illness, medical, dental that, you
007know, paid time off now is just general paid time off. The only two choices really are planned and unplanned PTO. So, what that talks about is the unplanned obviously is when you're sick or something just comes up and we want people to utilize that for that need. Um the other piece that we are talking about is planned PTO because this is always the worry with flexibility is that, you know, we're Middleton and us we've been talking like the concern is always been well, if they're planned PTO and they can take extended days off, isn't that going to turn into a problem with people over utilizing? What we found is that Middleton has shared with us that they actually didn't see an uptick in any real use of PTO, just a a tiny uptick, but now
008that they've been in their second year, it's kind of fallen back to the same levels that they've always seen. But even in the first year, it's just a small increase in use, but um they they didn't see it as a problem. So, we talked about that with work groups and have come up with language that is much more flexible again. And again, you're going to see this kind of worked in and out of the situation here, the situation report around handbook language. The other thing that you'll see in here when we talk about planned use of PTO, that can be used in increments of 1 to 2 days or 3 to 5 and there's some specific language um that says that 3 to 5 consecutive days of planned PTO are expected to um requested at
009least 3 months in advance of the absence date. And generally, there should be about maybe one of those per year at most. We understand that circumstances could lead to an additional request depending on what's happening in a person's life, but this has to be discussed with the supervisor first. And then there are times where it's like a planned one or two days. Those should be put in place kind of like what we do personal days now, at least 2 weeks in advance of the absence date, so people can prepare for subs. Again, this has been asked for in the work groups who have been working really hard to get this language to both set parameters, but also create flexibility and we feel like this language is going to allow us to do that for our
010employees. And again, you'll see this pop up in other areas as well of this handbook situation report. So, I'll get to those other pieces when we talk through those. The next 9.04 is temporary medical disability. This is just one of those pieces where we have This is not a job protected type of leave or ask. This is where we want to make sure that there's a little bit more specific language um where a supervisor if they're concerned about how long the employee can continue to work without impact on the duties. They can request that we we have medical certification the employee will be able to come back and do that work. And that's kind of like a collaboration between employee HR and also the supervisor themselves to really make sure when they return they are
011ready to return to the responsibilities of the job that they have had to take a leave from. The next one is kind of a a caveat that I think is really important to pay attention to and that's interaction with family medical leave provisions. So what we've been having happen more is having some people um where their spouses or within our district that work in the same district and we wanted to have language that shows that you know in addition to the shared FMLA entitlement this provides up to 12 work weeks or district approved leave to each eligible spouse for bonding purposes. Any leave beyond the combined 12 FMLA will be designated as district provided leave which is really around the temporary medical disability which we just talked about up top. We didn't have language that
012provides guidance if we have a couple in our district that are you know both looking at taking FMLA at the same time and that general provisions are that you would give 12 weeks between them. But what we've wanted to do is support our employees to a point where both spouses can and also take advantage of our temporary medical disability. And this language is just a help for future guidance cuz we didn't have this guidance before that that is a a possibility if that's what two working spouses within our district um would be looking for. And it just clarifies how we can handle that. So, that was the all employee handbook um proposals. Now, we're going to go on to specific work groups and this is where you're going to see some of those PTO pieces
013kind of play out again. So, professional educator 7.02, this is talking about payment for paid time off over 215 days. I'm going to talk about a provision in the PTO proposal that affects this and other groups. In the past, we had a cap on how many PTO days employees could um gain or keep PTO up to. Each group kind of had a little bit different of a cap, but with the new language, we're removing that cap cuz it just it doesn't make sense. If people are not utilizing their PTO, they shouldn't be penalized for losing it. Um because in the end if they retire from our district, they actually get some of those PTO days paid back out to them. Uh and removing that cap allows people to continue to, you know, store up those
014PTO days both for uh if they need it uh for like a family um medical issue, uh whatever it might be. Um but we're removing those caps. One thing that that does with professional educators is there is a provision in their handbook uh that we talked with the work group about and uh we're able to, you know, move on from 7.02 where at the end of a regular calendar year or fiscal year for our district, if a professional educator had more than 215 days in their bank, um they could get paid $50 for every day above 215 days. In order to kind of create more of a I would say a net zero effect to removing the caps, um we felt like it was appropriate to remove this payment because this would then uh again
015have a net zero effect for people that retired and and had more than the cap that typically was there. Um so again, we're eliminating that language because we now are removing the cap for PTO and that will affect uh payment at retirement uh instead of each year over and over. And typically, we've had about only about 6 to 10 uh professional educators that are at the point where they are above 215 days where they would get any type of payment at the end of a regular year. So we felt like that was important and we did talk with our work group about that to make sure that that made sense. Um the next part is uh just a real simple clarification cuz as we get to a calendar where we are providing work days for
016professional educators uh as a part of our calendar, that they aren't just PD days, but we're actually setting aside days to get work done uh in our system. We We created two of those for 26-27. We felt like it was important uh to put some language that both clarifies it for um educators and for um for supervisors as well. And you can see that we added on the end, "An on-site work day is contracted day where professional educators are required to report to work and are intended to be self-directed work time. So it's kind of, you know, how they look at that day. That's when we we allow them to again get things done that aren't uh meetings or other pieces that could be um put in place on those days, but it's really focused
017on self-directed work." So moving on with professional educators, there's a more items. Uh you can see that um we just put some clarification around retirement um that if people were provide us notice by October 15th, that that would not change uh their retirement eligibility or retirement date. Sometimes that question comes up. It's pretty simple, but we want to clarify that. For 10.04, uh B, um the HRA piece, this is just about um aligning this to the new PTO language. Um again, when we think about, you know, payment at the end of uh for HRA premium only plan, uh that line there uh wouldn't interact uh with our new PTO policy, so we removed that. Um 14.01, uh this is a payment for stipend for BLC, which is building leadership council, was $800 before. This is
018a team of um building leaders, and this could be professional educators, uh specifically um that the principal uses as a leadership team for feedback and just provide guidance for other uh staff members uh throughout the year, and they are part of, as you can see in the next section about work out their work schedule, you can see how that plays out. We're moving that up because on those work days, this would be some of our uh employees, professional educators, who would be a part of those work days that would also still be a part of building leadership work. So, they'd have to forego some of that uh that self-directed time that those work days are kind of opening up for professional educators, so they'd have to give that up. So, we felt like it would
019it was a good idea to uh to increase their stipend throughout the year to $1,200 cuz they are giving up those days, and you can see that kind of reflected in the hours that we're adding to um to that expectation for BLC teams. On the support staff, um, you can see again, um, 7.01, we're removing a part that doesn't fit anymore with the revised PTO language, uh, around, um, whether or not they take a PTO day before or after a holiday. Um, it it just didn't make sense anymore for creating flexibility. We shouldn't have another restricting language, uh, around that. Uh, simple clarification with certified food service certifications of one-time payment, uh, cuz that wasn't clearly spelled out in the past. Uh, 15.03, again, this is removing the cap from retirement language to be more
020in line with revised PTO language. We're removing the cap of how many PTO hours you can log, uh, or or bank. Under the administrative, uh, handbook, you can see for school closings, um, we're removing the concept around 2.05 with weather-related changes. Um, we changed this to personal day or unplanned PTO to be more in line with PTO language. Uh, 3.03, this is actually just outdated language. Um, you can see that there's a professional stipend, uh, provided to, um, administrators as a part of their, um, handbook, and that typically is 2,000 hours. This can go towards, um, uh, towards conferences, it can go towards, uh, continued, um, learning, uh, or professional development. Um, in the past, this language was in there for, um, kind of, um, mixing it up between people that are whole-year contracts and
021then people that have contracts that are less than a year. Since, uh, most of our, um, our administration are 260 now, it we needed to remove point two, uh, because again, that was more related to when we had a lot of varying contracts, uh, within our administrative group. And to uh 3.07b, uh again, uh where this is a clarification part around uh letter b of that section. Uh we did not have like the minimum age, and we want to make sure that that was clear uh that the minimum age is 55 at retirement for administrators. And then uh 3.07 is again uh removing the cap uh of retirement language because we don't have a cap anymore based on the revised PTO language. And then going on to administrative support handbook, uh you can see that
022again removing the cap because that we want to make sure it's in line with our overall PTO language change to flexibility. So, I'm going to just uh revisit that again. And again, if you look at the language around uh that we're proposing uh tonight, uh you will see that that removing that cap is how it played out among all the different employee groups uh to make sure that it was in line with this new language. Um obviously all the handbook language is important, but this is probably the big change, and this is something again our work groups have worked on, and I want to thank them all for kind of thinking about how this interacts with all the different employee group language uh while we're trying to work towards flexibility and uh kind of professional
023use of PTO while knowing that how important PTO is to bank for those days that you're really going to need them uh throughout life and to support life outside of work. Uh so, uh again, I thank all the work groups for all the work they did, especially on this piece because it was so complex and time-consuming and focus groups and uh how we got there. So, uh I appreciate the time, uh and again, these handbook proposals uh are up for um approval tonight at the the May 26th school board meeting. Thanks for your time.