Response to Survey Questions on Staff Attendance Incentives

December 2007

On 11-14-07 (and a follow up on 11-27-07), the following questions were asked on the Illinois List Serv.

  1. Does your district offer any financial incentive for perfect attendance (zero absences for the entire school year) for your teachers?
  2. Does your district offer a reward at a discounted amount for one absence or two?
  3. If yes, how much does a teacher receive for perfect attendance?
  4. How much for one absence?
  5. How much for two?
  6. Is this part of the collective bargaining agreement?

And finally,

  1. If you do offer the incentive, has it improved staff attendance?????

RESULTS:

Number of Districts that Responded that they have no “INCENTIVE”:34

Number of Districts that responded that they provide an “INCENTIVE”:16

Anecdotal comments presented for districts that do not provide an incentive:

  1. “We don’t offer money, but I do a small gift certificate or “bag of goodies” at the end of the year on my own. It’s very insignificant, but I recognize them at our end-of-year staff appreciation breakfast and the numbers have improved over the years – we are probably up to 10 or 12 out of 100 and started with 1 or 2.”
  1. “We do not directly offer any incentive for attendance, but we do still pay for sick days ($28 a day) if they wish to collect upon leaving after 10 years.
  1. Our District, in the last CBA, did provide teachers with a perfect attendance incentive. Zero sick days used provided the teacher with 3 additional sick days, 1 sick day used the teacher received 2 additional sick days, 2 sick days used provided the teacher with 1 additional sick day. That provision was taken out of the current CBA.

TRS looks at this type of incentive as ‘gifting’ additional sick days. If a teacher utilizes those “gifted’ sick days, to achieve 1 full year of sick leave, which is used for retirement purposes, the District will incur a penalty from TRS. I am unsure how TRS would look upon giving a financial incentive for perfect, or near perfect attendance. I would be inclined to think, TRS would count that financial incentive as creditable earnings. Therefore the question becomes are you exceeding 6% salary increases, in the 10 year look back window TRS has when determining a persons annuity. Again, there may be a financial penalty to the District.

As for the question, “Did it improve attendance?” not really.

I would suggest contacting TRS.

  1. “We do have in our contract that the district will pay a teacher $90/day of accumulated sick days that are not used towards their retirement up to a maximum of 45 days. Some of this money may have to be paid post retirement with the 6% cap.
  1. “We do nothing-just expect them to miss as little as possible.”
  1. “Would you really want staff to come to school if they are ill?”
  1. “We offer no financial incentives for perfect attendance because we don’t want to encourage teachers to come to work sick…Plus, their unused sick days apply for service credit when they retire and that’s usually a big incentive for them to not frivolously use sick days”

“It would be unfortunate if professional teachers need a “reward” to not use their sick days…And if they are sick, then we don’t want them infecting others.”

Anecdotal comments provided by districts that do provide an incentive:

  1. “We offer $100 per collective bargaining agreement. It does not work as I have been here three years and have not written one check.”
  1. Our attendance incentive is part of our contract and the wording is as follows:

Teachers who have perfect attendance for a semester shall receive an incentive payment of $125.00, to be paid within 30 days of the end of the semester. Teachers, who fall short of perfect attendance by less than one full day, shall receive an incentive payment of $100.00. For purpose of this section, less than one full day means missing any part of a single day. Approved professional leave shall not count against perfect attendance.

We have approximately 130 certified staff and last year we had 55 people each semester that were paid the incentive bonus.

Hope this helps.

  1. “Yes, target gift cards. 0 absences = $300, 1 absence = $200, 2 absences = $100, more than two = $0. It is a part of the CBA. We have had the incentive for over 10 years. It used to be a technology gift certificate, which were more effective years ago. I believe there are teachers that will not call off so they can get the bonus.
  1. “Certified employees shall be granted additional sick leave based on the following criteria:

If no personal days were used during the school year, the certified employee will have the option of banking those personal days or rolling their two (2) personal days into three (3) sick days.

If they certified employee uses two (2) or fewer sick days during the school year, they shall be granted two (2) additional sick days at the end of the school year.

If they certified employee uses more than two (2) but not more than four (4) sick days during the school year, they shall be granted one (1) additional sick day at the end of the school year.

  1. “Lexington pays the teachers for their unused personal days. That is about as close to an incentive as we get. They get the sub rate for the day which is $85 this year. They all get 3 personal days = $255.”
  1. “The Bourbonnais Elementary School District 53 Board pays $100 CASH that I deliver to the handful of people with perfect attendance. It is to my knowledge separate from the collective bargaining agreement. For that matter, the Board also gives every employee a $50 voucher to Honey Baked Ham for Christmas! The voucher costs the Board approximately $34 each.
  1. “This item is in our collective bargaining agreement. It is called “incentive pay”. The teacher receives a bonus check at the end of the year based on attendance as outlined below.

0 days missed = $500

1 day missed = $400

2 days missed = $250

3 days missed = $200

The teachers have three bereavement days in the contract. These days do not count against incentive pay. We have had this clause in the contract for at least 20 years. I am told it was very effective “in the beginning”. Over the last several years it seems that the older teachers earn the incentive pay. Money does not seem to motivate the younger teachers. If they need to miss, they miss. All things considered, we probably do slightly better than breaking even in terms of cost of incentive pay vs. sub pay. Of course the goal of incentive pay is to help keep the teachers in the class room! It does seem to increase attendance for the middle of the road teachers”

  1. “Our teacher’s contract has a stipend of $425 for perfect, $25 deducted per day for the first six days and none for over 6 days.”
  1. “0 absences is a $250 bonus. A teacher may have one period per day release time for medical, dental, legal or other professional appointments approved by the building principal that will not count against sick or persona leave provided the period can be covered without compensating another individual. Only perfect attendance gets paid money, however.

Any employee using sick time of 25% of less of the sick time earned during a school year shall be provided two additional days of sick leave to their sick leave bank; any employee using sick time of more than 25% but less than 50% of the sick time earned during a school year shall be provided one additional sick day of sick leave to their sick leave bank; employees working less than full time schedules shall have both the sick time use rate and the personal leave earning rates prorated (Everyone gets 12 to start with and can earn up to 2 additional days.

This is the first year for the additional sick leave days that can be earned, we have paid the bonus for about 7 years I guess, and so far this year we are doing better.”

  1. “$50 Gift Card to Applebee’s for perfect attendance—We used to give a $250 U.S. Savings Bond”
  1. “Perfect attendance and an employee gets one day’s pay. We do nothing for “good” attendance. It is indeed in the collective bargaining agreement.”
  1. “Sick Leave/Personal Leave Bonus: The Board of Education shall issue to each individual Certified Employee of the District, $500 for the year, if the Certified Employee does not use any of his or her ten (10) sick days and three (3) personal days to be paid on the June 15th check.

The Board of Education shall issue to each individual Non-Certified Employee of the District, $250 for the year, if the Non-Certified Employee does not use any of his or her ten (10) sick days and three (3) personal days, and does not elect to use any compensatory time. Mandated use of compensatory time by the Employer shall not affect a Non-Certified Employee’s eligibility for the $250 bonus. Said bonus is to be paid on the June 15th check.

We had four certified staff (earn this) last year, all only have two years left before retiring, they come to work ALL the time. I had one support staff. It has not improved, but it is a nice incentive for the cost.”

  1. “Ridgeview offers an incentive of $150 for anyone who has perfect attendance. There is nothing for anyone that only misses one or two days.”
  1. “This past year we gave a $100 Visa Card to the employees that had perfect attendance. No $’s for one or two absence. I will not know if attendance has improved or not until later this school term. This is not part of the bargaining agreement.”
  1. “Our district offers a second personal day (a “bonus day”) to all teachers who take less than five sick days in a year. It is in the contract and we have fairly good attendance.”
  1. “$500 for perfect attendance. Nothing for one absence. We usually have 3 or 4 a year out of 60 staff.”

One other response not included in the tallies:

“When I was at Atwood-Hammond, I personally recognized staff with perfect and excellent attendance with recognition plaques and an article in the local paper. Yes, I felt it did improve because they knew someone noticed or it mattered to me. If it was financially recognized, I believe it would be more of an incentive.”