Florida Governor Rick Scott recently signed into law House Bill 285, which allows school districts to extend sick leave donation policies to unrelated co-workers, an option already available to employees of state agencies.
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School districts must currently allow employees to donate sick leave to family members who are also employed by the school district. Such policies must require that employees exhaust their own sick leave before using donated leave and must specify that the donated sick leave has no terminal value. Current law also allows school districts to permit employees to donate unused sick leave to a sick leave pool for other employees. HB 285 authorizes school districts to allow employees to donate unused sick leave directly to an unrelated co-worker.
The bill specifies that sick leave transfer policies must:
- require medical documentation of the illness or injury for which leave is authorized
- establish a minimum number of sick leave days needed before an employee may participate in the leave transfer program
- require that unused transferred sick leave be returned to the employee who donated it
- establish the minimum number of sick leave days a donating employee must keep
The effective date of the bill is July 1, 2012.