Sun Prairie Area School District presents proposed employee-handbook updates covering AI, mandatory reporting and PTO rules

Chris Sadler, director of human resources for the Sun Prairie Area School District, presented proposed revisions to the district’s employee handbooks at a meeting preparing for the June 9, 2025, school board session.

The updates emphasize technology and electronic-communication rules, including explicit references to artificial-intelligence platforms, clearer data-protection responsibilities and updated social-media examples. "We did add concepts around artificial intelligence platforms to make sure that, that is consistent with the current increase in the use of artificial intelligence and technology," Sadler said.

Why it matters: the changes would govern teachers, support staff and all employees on topics that affect day-to-day work, intellectual-property rights and mandatory reporting obligations. The proposals would also change timing of some payments and tighten language about interactions with students and probationary employees.

Sadler said the professional-educator handbook clarifies what constitutes an instructional period for purposes of assigning overloads, defining "1 instructional period or class" as "45 minutes per day or 90 minutes every other day" to align with block scheduling. He described a proposed change to PTO payouts for employees who exceed a PTO-bank threshold, saying, "when somebody has an excess of 215 days of PTO in their PTO bank, then we do provide professional educators with a payment" and that processing will be moved to the regularly scheduled payment in July to ease business‑services timing.

The support-staff language would mirror an existing provision for substitutes who travel to a school and incur drive time, providing them payment in those rare instances. The district also clarified weekend and holiday pay for custodial staff, specifying that the handbook's time-and-a-half provision does not apply when an employee’s job assignment regularly requires weekend or holiday work.

On student-staff relations and reporting, Sadler said the district clarified age-related language to make clear prohibitions apply even when a student is 18 or older, and added a section to "really make clear the mandatory reporting requirements" for suspected child abuse, noting that reporting obligations relate to technology-mediated concerns as well.

The draft updates also expand the district’s "work made for hire" language to cover materials generated with artificial intelligence under an employee’s direction, asserting that the district "shall at all times retain all rights and privileges pertaining to any and all work made for hire." Sadler said legal counsel reviewed the AI language to align with counsel’s opinion.

Vacation and training rules were also addressed: the all-employee handbook proposal would confirm that vacation use generally requires supervisor approval and that employees who resign during a 90-workday probationary period would forfeit vacation payouts. The district proposed clarifying that required employment trainings, including state-required mandatory-reporting and blood-borne-pathogen training, are conditions of employment but do not count toward professional-development (PD) hours or points.

Sadler described prior staff work-group engagement around handbook language, citing last year’s change that moved certain PTO-related payouts to a "stay stipend" as an example of collaborative revisions. He presented the proposed edits as clarifications and updates rather than new benefits or policy reversals. No formal board action or votes were taken during the presentation.

The district plans to present the handbook changes to the school board at the June 9 meeting for consideration and possible adoption; Sadler said much of the work grew from routine annual review and recent developments in technology and social media.