Bill aims to return teachers to their classes after maternity leave

Many times, when teachers leave for an extended period of time to give birth and take care of a newborn, they spend time planning preparing for the substitute, preparing their students and preparing themselves for the time when they will come back.

That’s exactly what Vicki Ward of the Colonial School District in upstate Delaware did.

Ward, a 1987 Indian River High School grad, had taught for the Colonial district for 17 years when she and her husband learned they were having a second baby. Before giving birth, she prepared materials for the sub, met with her principal to discuss the qualities a substitute should possess to be successful teaching fifth grade, explained that she would be coming in before school to set up her room and meet with the substitute, and talked about how they would handle parent conferences upon her return.

Only, she never did return to that classroom, or to that school.

“On July 12 [2007] the newest member of our family arrived-a beautiful, healthy baby girl!” she wrote in a first-person account for the Delaware State Education Association’s Web site. “Four weeks later, my principal called saying that he had some ‘bad news.’ My fifth-grade position at Pleasantville had been filled by another teacher, a new hire. He had to say it several times in several different ways for me to comprehend. Finally, I exclaimed, ‘You mean I don’t work at Pleasantville anymore?’”

Ward ending up being “unassigned,” and finally, five days before her new assignment was to start, she learned she would be teaching at a different elementary school, in another grade. The sudden shift wasn’t what Ward expected when taking her maternity leave, under the auspices of the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Since then, she has worked diligently to organize people on the issue of teacher leave policies, and just recently a parent of a child in the district got involved in her efforts, speaking out about the impact a move like the one Ward experienced has made on children in the affected classes.

In response to such cases, State Rep. Valerie Longhurst has introduced HB 157, for which there was a House Education Committee hearing on Wednesday, June 10. HB 157 is an act to amend Title 14 of the Delaware Code relating to the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The bill aims to “makes clear that a full-time or part-time teacher of a school district or a charter school who has satisfied all requirements to entitle the teacher to take leave under The Family and Medical Leave Act shall be returned to the same exact teaching position that the teacher held before taking such leave.”

Ward said it would pertain to teachers taking 12 weeks or less, which she said she and many of her colleagues were taking.

She also said that, now, after two years dealing with the issue, she realizes she was one of the lucky ones.

“I didn’t know this was going to happen to me at the beginning of this,” she said this week. “Now we have women who the entire time they’re pregnant don’t know what is going to happen to them. They are eight and nine months pregnant, packing up their items just in case, and they can’t even prepare their kids. It’s an awful situation.”

She said it isn’t even about what happened to her as much as it is about the principle of the situation.

“I live here. My son goes here,” she said. “I want this changed. “This is not the way to treat women and kids in the district.”

To track HB 157 and other bills, visit http://www.legis.delaware.gov.

Colonial School District Superintendent George H. Meney was contacted for this story but did not respond before Coastal Point deadline.