Using leave time for Child's School Activities

[mthds]

I am curious to hear from working parents how your employeer handles request from parents who need to take an hour or so off in order to attend activites at their child's school. Things such as programs, field trips, lunch, etc.

Do you get paid leave or is it without pay? I am asking because my employeer has changed the policy from taking time without any penalty. (Got paid but didn't have to use leave time) Now you can still take the time off but you have to use your leave time and find someone to cover for you while you are gone. Once you are out of leave time you can only be out for family emergencies.

Do any of you have trouble taking time off work to go to your child's school? Just wondering how other employeers handle this. I realize that I am lucky to work where we have this generous policy even if it means using leave time. It just got me started thinking how others are able to take time away from work and be invovled at their child's school.

 

[KirstenB]

Even for an hour activity, it'd take me 25 minutes to get to and from the school. One hour, I could have taken it as a lunch hour. But since it took me longer, I would take it as a 1/2 day leave from my vacation days.

 

[BillSears]

If I take off it's vacation time. I do get paid but I'm using my vacation time a quater of an hour at a time to take off. If I run out of vacation time then I'm not allowed to take off.

 

[jen0610]

Here at work, if you are salaried, and you need to leave for a time and come back, come in late or leave early, you still get your full salary. Plus, you do not have to use any of your vacation time. Nor do you need to make up these missed hours.

If you are hourly, you can either use 1/2 of one of your 3 personnal days, a full vacation day, make up the hours or just be short the hours on your paycheck. I personnally always make up the time I miss or as much of it as I can. I really try not to eat up my personnal or vacation days.

And outta 15 office employees, want to take a guess how many are salary versus hourly and the sex of those who are salary versus hourly. That is a whole other issue.

 

[NotUrsula]

For any absence (regardless of reason) if you don't take more than 90 minutes you can make it up that day, but longer than that and you have to take your paid leave time, which can't be taken in a bloc smaller than 4 hours.

If it takes longer than 90 minutes and you're out of leave time, you don't go; simple as that.

We work over 30 minutes from school, so we don't go to school functions that happen during the day. DS knows that we cannot use up leave time that way; we have to save it for days when the school is closed.

 

[Darcy03231]

I work in a small law office and am less than 5 mins from my home and have never been more than 5-10 min away from any of my children's schools.

I'm lucky that I've been able to attend events and just make up the time (as long as its made up during that week). The only time I haven't been able to go is if there's a deadline that we have to make and there's no way for me to be out of the office. My children are now 25, 21, 18 and 16 and I can only recall this happening once.

If it was for a field trip that I volunteered to chaperone, I just took a vacation day.

 

[Christine]

I work for the Federal Government but worked private sector for 20+ years and the policy was always the same.

If you are leaving work within work hours, you take leave. Period. I don't have to tell my employer what I'm using the leave for because it is my leave and that is not their business. I just tell them I need an hour or two off.

Sick leave is a different story. We have a pot of leave for that and we have to either be sick to take it or we have to be going to a doctor's appointment. So we do have to provide some type of reason for using sick leave.

 

[ahhappy]

I am an hourly employee. I have a paid time off bank of hours that includes vacation, sick and holiday time. If I want to be off for school functions, I use my pto time in quarter hour increments. There is a small amount of flexibility if I want to just not be paid for that time (say if I've run my pto bank down to 0). I am not allowed to make up time.

 

[aprilgail2]

If its a field trip or something I want to go on I just call off sick. We can't take a half hour or an hour and run someplace---its either you work the whole day or you don't work the whole day...

 

[Tink888]

At my last job if it was 2 hours or less in the span of one week, I got paid and made the time up in the same week (coming early, staying late, working through lunch).

Anything over 2 hours was deducted from my PTO time.

 

[bigbabyblues]

We get paid if we want to use vacation hours (our vacation is done by hours, not days or weeks. You can take as little as an hour at a time), or we can make up the time as long as it's within the same pay period.

 

[Kimberle]

I just make the time up. As long as I put in my 37.5 hrs, my boss doesn't care. I'm salaried, but hourly folks can do the same too.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

My husband's former employer had a more formalized work schedule and *usually* you could coordinate with a leader/boss to take the time to go to an activity. This of course would be impossible if there was a pressing deadline, but just run of the mill stuff, no big deal. Usually it isn't paid. The employee would stay later that day OR they'd use vacation time if they didn't want to make it up (or otherwise could not).


DH's current employer is pretty flexible (work at home/remote office situation) so things are far more flexible. But the circumstances are usually similar. If nothing extremely pressing is going on, he'll make something and if there is he can't.

I've been very sick this week and we homeschool. We've taken an academic break, but they had a field trip on Monday to a farm and he went in my place. He was "off work" for about 5 hours to do this. If he is unable to make the time up throughout the rest of his pay period, then he'll mark that as vacation.

He of course is always reachable by phone for the current employer. (Former employer had a no work off campus policy so it would be extremely rare for DH to do anything off campus if he left to do something with family.)

I like Flex employers as long as the employees do not use it.(shortly after getting hired, DH did end up terming an employee who didn't understand that despite it being a work at home company--it didn't mean that he could work merely at his convenience.)

ETA: Hubby is officially salaried in both jobs, but b/c they are on govt contracts--he has to charge the hours to specific "pots"--so he has to document his hours kind of like an hourly employee. They have to add up to the work hours in a pay period and if they don't, then he uses his PTO allocation to get the total to add up to the right number.

 

[daisyduck123]

1st grade teacher here

No, I can't take off an hour to go ANYWHERE.

I can only take time off in FULL DAY or 1/2 DAY increments & yes ....I do have to get docked for that time....which I fully understand.

I don't see why anyone should expect to leave work & NOT GET DOCKED for it. You're NOT there.

 

[Christine]

I don't see why anyone should expect to leave work & NOT GET DOCKED for it. You're NOT there.

Well...some salaried employees actually don't get docked. I had a boss who said "Hey, if you have to leave early to go to the doctor/dentist/school conference, etc., I'm not going to nickel and dime you for leave. Try to do it at the beginning of the day or at the end and it's not big deal. On the other hand, if I need you to stay late for an hour here and there, I'm not going to pay you either."

This situation always worked out for us employees. We were not hourly employees, we worked hard when we were there, put in uncompensated overtime when required, so the little perk was nice. But I do realize that not every place can operate this way.

 

[padams]

My employees can take an hour or two, and just get their work done before or after they leave. If they take 1/2 day or more off, then it is leave time.

 

[amyup]

My DH's work is competely flexible. He is salary and can leave work for whatever reason without using vacation time. Of course, he stays late or comes early if he's leaving that day for an appointment. Its really nice to have a job with flexibility when you have kids. I'm a former teacher and we had NO flexibility whatsoever...sick day or nothing.

 

[Kimberle]

1st grade teacher here

No, I can't take off an hour to go ANYWHERE.

I can only take time off in FULL DAY or 1/2 DAY increments & yes ....I do have to get docked for that time....which I fully understand.

I don't see why anyone should expect to leave work & NOT GET DOCKED for it. You're NOT there.

There is a BIG difference in teaching kids and working in an office. I can "pause" my work and return to finish it. You can't exactly "pause" your kiddo's. When you are salaried, you're paid to get a job done, not to work a certain # of hours. I don't think my employer would be to happy when I strolled out at "quitting time" when I have a deadline.

 

[C.Ann]

My DD's DH does not have any "leave" or paid time off - other than a one week vacation each year.. However, he never, ever misses an event at my DGD's school.. He informs his boss of the time frame required (usually 2 to 3 hours because he's so far from the school) and then makes up the time during the rest of the week.. He'll come in early and stay late until his required 40 hours are in.. Not the best solution, but it's very, very important for him to attend these functions because when he was growing up (an only child), both of his parents worked and never attended any of his activities at school.. He swore he would never do that to his own child, so this is a priority for him..

 

[KAMKIM]

I am salary as well. I often work at home at night (we do not get paid for OT) but they know I do this to meet some deadlines I may have. Because I put forth this extra effort, they are very lenient when it comes to things like this. Typically I will go on my lunch hour, but may end up being 1 1/2 hours vs 1 hour. Sometimes I will stay late if I can, if not I dont worry about it because the hours I put in at night and on the weekends more than make up for that anyways.