(Seguin) — The Seguin ISD is doing its part to help protect employees as it enters this challenging year.
The Seguin ISD Board of Trustees on Tuesday approved a resolution that extended paid sick leave for COVID-19 related illnesses among its employees.
Chief Financial Officer Anthony Hillberg says the paid sick leave, however, will not be paid out without the caveats as spelled out by the district.
“In the initial parameters, the leave was just provided to everyone. It was just front loaded to everyone. In this case, that will not be the case. Individuals, should they choose to leave and it’s their prerogative but there will be some requirement to show evidence that they actually are COVID positive as well as have done what they can to prevent being COVID positive, that being having vaccinations so those two forms of evidence, they can show they have done their part. They are still positive and need to be quarantined and would not have to take their own personal leave up to 10 days, the district would foot that bill,” said Hillberg.
Seguin ISD Superintendent Dr. Matthew Gutierrez says he wants employees to take note of this requirement to be afforded the COVID-19 sick leave. He says the virus has a true impact on its classrooms.
“Hopefully, this would incentivize some to become vaccinated because our ultimate goal is to have our students in our classrooms with their certified teacher and what we experienced last year was a lot of substitutes having to come in and what we did see after the vaccinations in the spring, we did see cases significantly decrease but we were still wearing masks and so we are moving into territory where masks are not mandated. They will only be encouraged so we are trying to maintain as safe of an environment for our students and staff and particularly our medically fragile student population and we have medically fragile staff as well so we just want to keep student/staff safety and well-being at the priority doing what we can within the parameters that we do have,” said Gutierrez.
District officials say the sick leave will only be for the employee and not for a child or someone they may have to stay home for.