Bill seeks time off for school activities

State lawmakers have opted for a study after considering for the first time legislation that would have required employers to grant workers time off to be involved in their children’s school-related functions.

The measure would have entitled parents, grandparents and legal guardians of children in kindergarten through 12th grade to a certain number of "family school leave" hours per month and prevented employers from reprimanding workers for using their vacation time, sick leave, personal days or other accrued compensatory time for that purpose.

"For a few years now, I have been introducing resolutions to call upon the Board of Education to increase their parent and community engagement policies at the Board of Education level and (to) really start to see some of that adoption and implementation at the school level," said Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee and author of the bill. "But if parents and guardians can’t actually take the time to go down to the school and be a part of their children’s education, then those policies are for nothing."

After listening to public testimony on Senate Bill 562 earlier this month, Tokuda and the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee amended the measure to request that the Legislative Reference Bureau conduct a study regarding the feasibility and potential impact of enacting family school leave requirements in Hawaii.

The state departments of Human Resources Development and Labor and Industrial Relations, along with the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, expressed concerns regarding the original draft of the bill because of the impact it could have had on business operations.

"This mandate will negatively impact state departments and agencies as operational requirements are not a consideration in determining whether to grant the requested time off," the Department of Human Resources Development testimony states.

The Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii pointed out that many businesses already offer employees time off that would allow them to participate in school activities.

"We really didn’t know if it was necessary to have it mandated," said Jim Tollefson, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce. "If it’s already being done by businesses, why do we need to mandate it?"

Cheri Nakamura, director of HE‘E, the statewide Hui for Excellence in Education, said the goal of such a mandate would be to extend family school leave opportunities to workers who might not currently have them.

"What we’ve heard is that public employees, or perhaps some human resources policies at some companies, do actually have policies that allow families to take off … but I’m not sure of how many companies actually do it," Nakamura said. "I think it really boils down to just giving everybody a level playing field to have the access. We want all parents to participate."

The amended version of the bill calls for the Legislative Reference Bureau to research best practices in the 12 states that have enacted family school leave laws, as well as converse with the labor department, the chamber and HE‘E to determine what provision could work in Hawaii in terms of the number of leave hours made available to workers and the size of businesses that would be required to comply.

"We understand that for employers it is a cost to them if they’re having to allow employees to take off," Nakamura said, adding that perhaps there could be an exemption for certain types of businesses.

"We’d like to be able to sit down and solve the issue in a collaborative way," she said. "We’re not averse to this kind of conversation."

Agencies concerned about the initial bill also took issue with the fact that it would have allowed workers to use vacation time, sick leave, personal days or other accrued compensatory time off to attend school events such as parent-teacher conferences and chaperoned field trips.

"The use of sick leave to attend school activities is contrary to the purpose of the leave, which is to allow employees to recover from illness," the human resources department testimony states.

Hawaii businesses are not required to provide workers with paid sick leave.

Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe) said she defers to the labor department regarding how family school leave should be accounted for, but she thinks allowing workers to participate in their children’s school activities could be considered a health and wellness issue.

"I would hope that people would understand that it’s somewhat complementary," she said. "Workers are productive when they are healthy, when their family lives are stable and they feel good about their personal lives, they feel good about how their children are doing in school. So I think in the end both work towards trying to help employers have healthy, productive employees."

Rep. Roy Takumi, chairman of the House Education Committee, agreed that passing sick leave requirements in Hawaii has been difficult — two Senate bills introduced this year received no hearings, and two House bills introduced died in initial committee hearings — but he said leave requirements, family school leave in particular, could benefit employers and the community.

"The better our children do in school, the better they will be productive citizens later on," he said.

The House version of the family school leave bill was killed this session because it did not receive a committee hearing. If the Senate version now calling for a feasibility study is not heard by the Senate Ways and Means Committee soon, it also will die this session. Friday is the deadline for the bill to be sent to the Senate floor.

"Hopefully the bill will pass," Tokuda said. "If not, we’ll keep plugging on; we’ll keep trying."

"It’s just very helpful when you’ve got reports like this that are able to give us very specific information to help us formulate policy better. … But lacking that, there are still good discussions that can take place."