Sunnyside Unified School District is implementing its first paid time off buyback policy in 30 years to address employee concerns and attendance issues.

The policy would allow staff to sell back unused sick or personal time at the end of the school year.

Currently, the district does not offer buyouts, though it has a payout policy for certified employees hired before 1992. This policy allows employees to sell back PTO upon retirement or separation.

However, with only three employees still eligible for the payout policy, district officials say it’s time for a change.

District officials and governing board members discussed the situation at a meeting earlier this month, citing research showing that Marana and Vail are the only two Pima County districts that offer buyout policies.

The PTO accrual time is the rate at which an employee earns PTO over time. Chief Financial Officer Karla Walters said during the meeting that Sunnyside's PTO accrual rate is one of the highest among the districts they researched.

The district first began discussing a buyback policy in February and aims to have a draft ready for review by the employees' union by next month. The goal is for the governing board to approve the policy in late February, with implementation before the start of the 2025-26 school year.

Kathleen Scheppe, the district’s chief human resources officer, said the buyback policy would give teachers and staff a way to monetize unused PTO, addressing a longstanding issue that impacts employee morale and financial planning.

“The main purpose would be to minimize interruptions to student learning. It's important for our students to have consistent teachers in their classrooms with them each day so their learning isn't interrupted,” she said. “We want to minimize employee absenteeism by incentivizing employees with good attendance. We're hoping that the package deal might help us address some of those concerns that we've had.”

Walters said that by October 21, a third of the way into the 2024-25 school year, there had already been 3,243 teacher absences reported across the district.

"That averages out to about 4.3 absences per classroom," Walters said. "If this trend continues, we could see roughly 13 days of teacher absences per classroom over the course of the year."

More than 850 of those absences occurred on Fridays, and another 660 took place on Thursdays. Walters noted that the highest number of absences occurred in elementary schools.

"Attendance matters," Scheppe said.

Walters said the district is considering key factors for their buyback policy, including years of service, and ran the board through several scenarios that calculated buyback cost based on different rates and factors.

With 1,777 employees in the district, it would cost $431,000 to buy back a single day of PTO from all employees, assuming every staff member is eligible and has days available to sell.

The district is weighing all those options, including what types of employees will be eligible and what those accrual rates will look like, said District Superintendent Jose Gastelum.

“One of the shockers here is that we haven’t had a policy in place in 32 years, so there’s no incentive, there’s no show of appreciation in terms of the work certified staff is doing,” he said. “The mentality sometimes is ‘use or lose.’ You do get those individuals that are in their last couple years and they’re like, ‘I’m going to start using up some of my days. I’ve given so much and haven’t had anything in return.’ ”

Gastelum said the district is committed to having the policy in place before contract renewals are sent out in March.

He hopes the buyback option will help retain current teachers and prevent them from seeking other employment opportunities before the contract period ends.

“I think teachers do want to be in our classrooms, so we do have to put something in place to show our appreciation and incentivize employees to be there,” he said.

Samantha Callicutt is a Tucson Spotlight reporter and graduate student at the University of Arizona. Contact her at Scallicutt@arizona.edu.

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