Sick Leave Bank •
Employees who have encountered a qualifying event such as childbirth, placement of a child for adoption, or catastrophic illness or injury and who do not have sufficient sick leave or vacation days may apply for days from the Sick Leave Bank/Paid Parental Leave.
• Catastrophic injury or illness is defined as a severe condition or combination of conditions affecting the mental or physical health of the employee. Such illness or injury must be severe enough to force the employee to exhaust all personal leave (sick and vacation) and potentially lose compensation.
• Parental leave is defined as leave granted during the first six (6) weeks immediately following the birth of a child or placement of a child with an employee in connection with adoption. The purpose of paid leave is to enable employees to care for and bond with their newborn or newly adopted child.
In no case will an employee receive more than six (6) weeks of paid parental leave in a rolling 12-month period. If the employee is approved for leave beyond the six (6) weeks of paid parental leave, they must use their sick and vacation time. Employees not returning to work after paid parental leave may be required to reimburse the sick bank hours used with the employee's remaining leave hours.
• All applications for Sick Leave Bank/Paid Parental Leave for catastrophic illness or injury must be accompanied by a licensed physician's statement which states the beginning date of the condition, a description of the illness or injury, and the anticipated date the employee will be able to return to work. Employees who use sick leave days from the bank are not required to pay them back.
• Employees will meet with their supervisor to determine how job duties will be completed in their absence.
• Full-time employees, including those employees who have contributed to the bank and who have been employed by the College for one full year, may apply for Sick Leave Bank/Paid Parental leave.
• Sick leave bank days run concurrently with FMLA.
• Approved applicants may be granted days from the requested start date until a combination of their sick leave, vacation days, and bank days have reached a maximum of one hundred twenty (120) days or until the bank is exhausted. Each day equates to 8 hours. Days may be taken in whole or half-day increments.
------------------------------
Jamie McGee
Bursar
Cowley College
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 02-09-2026 03:11 PM
From: Kat Andrew
Subject: Shared Sick Leave - Do We Dare?
We have been approached by a group of employees that are wanting the college to implement a shared sick leave program. Would other colleges/universities be willing to share their procedure and/or policy if you have this type of program? Would you be willing to share the good, the bad, the ugly associated with this process? What tax and audit issues have you encountered? So far it appears it would be a very manual process and require a lot of out of system tracking so I'm trying to steer away from it.
------------------------------
Kat Andrew
AVC of Finance
Metropolitan Community College
------------------------------