Hiring full-time workers on a 190 day school year calendar

tiles

We have school-based therapists who work in the schools. We would like to set up an employment arrangement with them where they would work 10 months out of the year. Their pay would be calculated to cover these ten months. An hourly rate would be determined and then annualized to a salary. This would then be spread over the allotted number of pay periods. We would continue to provide insurance coverage, however, the during the two months the employee is off work, they would be responsible for their portion of the premiums. Paid time off would continue to be accrued except during the two months they are off work. I was wondering what the legal ramifications would be to set up such an arrangement and if anybody has done something like this that they would be willing to share. I know that school corporations do it with teachers, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing it with our therapists working in the schools.

Thanks,
[email]tiles@iquest.net[/email]

Don D

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-26-02 AT 02:22PM (CST)[/font][p]tiles: Sounds like a great and novel idea. Nice opportunity for the therapists for sure. Looks simply like a regular job paid year round with two months leave allowed.Teachers have almost the same deal. But, what do you think about dividing the dollar amount by 12 months just so they will continue to have a paycheck during those two months. That's what schools do...let the teacher have the option of being paid in 9 months or 12.

tiles

It does sound like a simple way of hiring therapists who we have working in the schools. In regards to the issue of spreading out their money over 12 months, the question arose about how do they accrue/use paid time off since they are off for two/three months during the summer. All of our full-time employees accrue paid time off, and we were not sure how to set that up for these individuals.

Thanks!

Don D

I don't see why you can't do it just like teachers. In the school situations I'm familiar with, they have so many days that they can accumulate and they can take those days for illness or personal days during the regular term (180-190 days)and they're off for about 2.5 months in the summer and they have the option of spreading their pay over 9 months or 12 for the contract year. Spreading their pay over the summer months, might help yuo hold on to them rather than have a few seek other jobs when the checks stop during the summer. This might be very attractive for people in this profession.