Board workshop reviews sweeping handbook updates: leave rules, inclement-weather pay and fitness exams among changes

At a March 10 workshop the Fond du Lac School Board heard a detailed presentation on proposed 2025'26 employee handbook revisions covering teachers, custodial staff, secretaries and instructional assistants.

The presentation, led by Mrs. Lombardo, reorganized leave sections, clarified paid and unpaid leave, and proposed new rules for unpaid personal leaves, inclement-weather pay and pre-employment fitness checks.

Why it matters: the changes affect district employees'eligibility for leave, how inclement-weather days are handled, internal substitute-pay rules and benefit eligibility. Some items also reduce previously available pay options for staff who work on snow days.

Major proposed changes

'23A lot of this is gonna be similar across the 4 handbooks,'2 Mrs. Lombardo said, introducing the updates.

Leaves and absence rules: the handbooks would be reorganized into paid leaves (including bereavement and legal-proceedings leave), FMLA/ADA, and unpaid leaves. Bereavement leave was clarified to list qualifying relatives; the handbook adds an appeal path to the superintendent for denials.

Donated/shared leave: the shared-donation provision now states donated leave must be used in the fiscal year in which it was donated, to avoid "creating leave that doesn't exist" when donors leave the district.

Unpaid personal leave: the district would combine several prior categories into two unpaid-leave types for "extraordinary circumstances": up to 30 consecutive calendar days, and a second category for 31 days or more. The policy includes notice requirements (the presenter cited a requirement of four weeks' notice for leaves of 31 days or more and eight weeks' notice for the shorter category).

Transfers and compensation: voluntary-transfer eligibility for teacher vacancies would be lowered from five years of service to three. The handbook clarifies the $2,000 master's stipend is a separate stipend (not part of base salary) and outlines approval and alignment requirements for advanced-degree stipends; PhD and National Board compensation remain addressed separately.

Insurance and the cash-in-lieu rule: staff said the district's "maintenance of insurability" (cash-in-lieu) option defines a month as working at least 50% of workdays in a calendar month, and adds that an employee already covered as a dependent on another district employee's family plan is not eligible for cash-in-lieu. The presenter illustrated the point: "If you're already on your parents' insurance, you shouldn't get the cash in lieu," she said.

Physical-fitness exams: the custodial and instructional-assistant handbooks would reintroduce pre-employment physical-fitness exams for roles with substantial physical demands and permit a return-to-work fitness exam at the district's discretion following injury.

Inclement-weather pay and schedules: staff proposed removing a long-standing additional paid day or extra vacation-day option for custodial and maintenance employees who work on inclement-weather days; secretaries and interpreters were described as working from home on snow days to maintain family communications and administrative functions, with the option to take a personal or vacation day instead.

Internal subbing and co-teaching: the teacher handbook adds an appendix to standardize internal subbing pay and clarified that when two co-teachers are jointly providing instruction in a co-taught class there is no additional sub pay for one co-teacher simply because the other is absent; substitute pay applies when a teacher leaves a class and an eligible substitute covers.

Board discussion

Board members asked for flexibility on bereavement rules for nontraditional close relationships and asked staff to clarify conference and offset-day accounting for staff who split duties across buildings. A board member asked for additional clarity on how employees who work at multiple buildings (for example, special-service staff) will be counted for conference offset days; staff said they would refine that language.

Next steps

Staff said the handbook revisions will take effect July 1 if approved and that the documents are a "living, breathing" set of rules to be adjusted regularly. No formal board vote on the handbook text occurred at the workshop; the meeting moved from the regular session into the workshop by a separate motion earlier in the evening.