Request By:
Mrs. Beverly J. Bell
2117 S. Virginia Street
Hopkinsville, Kentucky 42240
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
You have asked the Office of the Attorney General for an opinion concerning the withholding of salary and the charging of sick leave for days dropped from the school calendar. As background to your question you have stated you are a teacher in the Christian County School System. During this winter you were ill and missed most of the month of January and a part of the month of February. During this period of time the school system missed seventeen days due to weather conditions. You further stated that the Christian County Schools have received permission from the Kentucky Department of Education to drop five days from this year's school calendar. You stated you have been informed that five days of your salary will be deducted because you were sick and not able to work on the specific days listed as dropped from the school calendar. Your question is whether it is legal to deduct wages for days missed when there was no school or work for which teachers were to report.
A school teacher in our public common schools is employed for the school term established by the employing school system. The minimum school term is 185 days. KRS 158.070. However, utilizing subsection (3) of this statute of our school laws, the Governor and the State Department for Elementary and Secondary Education have each authorized "calamity" days to local school districts due to the extremely harsh winter weather experienced across the Commonwealth. That the school term of a school district is permitted to be thus so shortened is through no action of the teachers. The teachers are entitled to their full contract salary. KRS 157.390; 157.420. Also, pursuant to Senate Bill 182, passed by the 1978 General Assembly with an emergency declaration, having become law upon being signed by the Governor on March 8, 1978, teachers are entitled to be paid regularly, on dates determined by the employing board of education, during the school year. The gross salary to be received by the teacher is to be without deduction for days on which schools were closed.
In view of the above, we see no reason why you are not entitled to be paid for the "calamity" days. However, in that you would have been unable to teach on these days, we believe these days must be taken as sick leave days by you. Thus, you are entitled to be paid for these five days dropped from the school term as sick leave days under KRS 161.155.