Open Discussion Forum

  • 1.  Staff Vacations

    Posted 05-29-2018 05:48 PM
    My question is in regards to teaching staff vacations (or other PTO). How does your center do it? We are an organization of 3 centers. At my location we have 24 full-time teachers, along with assorted substitutes and floaters. Our vacation time-off policy includes giving 2 weeks notice, it cannot be during "black-out dates," and only 2 teachers at a time can request time off. This all seems pretty reasonable except we consistently have issues with staff not being able to take enough time off to have meaningful, week-long vacations, and it can be hard to take time off for medical appointments with this existing system. Administration is very supportive and encouraging of teachers taking time off to recharge and prevent burn out, but we are all at a loss of how to fix things.

    Please share how your school does things!  FYI We are open all through the summer; only closed major holidays and the week between Christmas and New Years. 

    Cathy

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    Cathy Reedy
    Gainesville FL
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  • 2.  RE: Staff Vacations

    Posted 05-30-2018 08:19 AM
    Good morning! Our center has 40+ staff, with 2 FT/1PT person in each classroom plus additional support staff.  We post 12-18 months at a time for the 'time off calendar' and encourage people to request vacations in advance as much as possible which allows them to actually take a full week or schedule dr apts.  We write initials on the calendar as people request so we can always see who is already going to be off.  We also require a 2 weeks notice since we give staff their schedules 2 weeks out.  We also only allow 1 person from a department to be off on any given day and only 2 people off on a day (3 people in the summer since our counts drop).  We've found this to work out well.  If you are coordinating time off between multiple buildings perhaps a shared calendar- like Google- would work better?  

    One of the other things we recently added was that each staff member is allowed to request 20 days off per year- vacation, dr apts, mental health, festival, doesn't matter the reason, they get 20 days per year (looking back 6 months, forward 6 months).  This does not include sick days-- just like with kids we can't know they will be sick on such-and-such a date and we expect people to get sick now and then--or emergencies. 

    Hope that helps!!

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    Sharon Bligh, NY

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  • 3.  RE: Staff Vacations

    Posted 05-31-2018 07:25 AM
    Can you tell this to my boss?

    Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE device





  • 4.  RE: Staff Vacations

    Posted 06-01-2018 05:47 PM
    Hello,

    I am a family home child care provider. In my handbook for parents - child care policy for vacation and holidays for me and my helpers states - 12 paid vacation days, six sick days and a list of federal holidays (as anyone working in any office has).
    We are also closed from Chrismas day to New Year day - charging half the fees (to recharge/recreate/reorganize). 
    Working with young children, especially Infants and Toddlers is not everyone's cup of tea! We have to take care of ourselves to take care and nurture the young ones that parents entrust us with.

    I appreciate and feel blessed that my kid's parents support and value our services and treat us ike professionals (it is upon us to be professional and provide quality care  so that we are not considered as "baby sitters").

    Thanks,

    "Building relationships of trust and care"

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    Jagruti Patel
    Patel Family Child Care
    Redlands CA
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