The Parental Leave Act, G.L. c. 149, § 105D, allows an employee to take up to eight weeks of parental leave upon the birth or adoption of a child. G.L. c. 71, § 41 awards “professional teacher status” (PTS) to certain school employees who have served for three consecutive years, which provides them with additional due process protections surrounding discipline or dismissal, including a statutory right to arbitration. A teacher took 56 days of parental leave in her second year. The Town notified her that the calculation of her consecutive service for PTS needed to be extended for another school year because her second year of service was incomplete due to her time off on parental leave. When she was subsequently terminated at the end of that additional year, the teacher and the school department disagreed on whether she had served three consecutive years so as to qualify for PTS. The arbitrator agreed with the school district that the teacher had not obtained PTS.
The Appeals Court agreed with the teacher and reversed the decision of the arbitrator. In Chaloff v. Westwood Public Schools, No. 23-P-693 (October 25, 2024), the Court noted that the parental leave statute guaranteed that taking leave does not affect the employee’s “status, pay, length of service credit and seniority . . ..” The arbitrator’s decision was based in part on an unresolved question in a case before the Supreme Judicial Court. In Solomon v. School Comm. of Boston, 395 Mass. 12 (1985), the court had held that the time on leave did not count toward the time required to qualify for tenure. Id. at 18. But it left open whether the teacher must serve a complete additional year to compensate for the incomplete year. The arbitrator agreed with the school district that merely working 56 days in Year 4 did not make up for the break in service. Instead, the school district was entitled to consider service based on three complete years.
The Appeals Court held that this interpretation was inconsistent with both the plain language and the public policy of the Parental Leave Act. The school district’s interpretation gave the teacher no credit for her actual service in her second year, thereby penalizing her for taking parental leave. The public policy is represented by safeguarding a teacher’s length of service. In addition, G.L. c. 71, § 41 only required three consecutive years of service for tenure. Once the teacher served 56 days in the fourth year, she satisfied that requirement. The school district’s policy impermissibly changed the probationary period to four consecutive years.
This is one of the rare decisions in which the Court reversed an arbitrator’s award. While this case was in the educational context, the Parental Leave Act applies to all public employees so the Court’s decision here may be relevant to scenarios with other public employees who must complete a probationary period before various benefits or rights vest either under a town’s personnel bylaws/policies or a collective bargaining agreement.
