All North Carolina state employees will soon get paid parental leave. Here's what it could look like

Hundreds of thousands of North Carolina state government employees will have access to paid parental leave, starting this month.

Paid parental leave is expanding to every state government employee under the state’s new law that also restricts abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Previously, paid parental leave was only available to state employees under an executive order by Gov. Roy Cooper that was limited to about 56,000 state employees who worked in offices he oversaw as governor. That did not include public schools, universities or any state government offices run by a statewide elected official. However, those other offices could choose to offer paid parental leave, even though they were not covered by the order.

State agencies have begun drafting temporary rules to make the benefit available to employees, though the law went into effect July 1.

Temporary rules could be adopted as soon as August, while permanent rules would come at a later date, via a lengthier rule-making process.

The State Board of Education is set to vote on temporary rules in August.

The draft rules, initially written by the State Human Resources Commission, mirror the ones already adopted for the employees affected by Cooper’s order.

That looks like this:

• Any full-time state employee who gives birth would get eight weeks of paid leave.
• A full-time state employee whose spouse has given birth, who has adopted a child, who is fostering a child or who is otherwise newly responsible for raising a child would get four weeks of paid leave.
• Part-time employees would get prorated leave.
• Leave is only available once during a 12-month period
• Leave is only available for parents or guardians of children born on July 1, 2023, or later. It would not be available for parents or guardians of children born before that, even the child is adopted or taken into a foster home after that date. That is likely to cause “angst” for some employees, Tom Tomberlin told the State Board of Education on Thursday. Tomberlin is the director of educator preparation and teacher licensure for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
• Employees must provide advance notice of their intent to take leave, whenever possible
• Employees can only receive the benefit if they have been employed for 12 consecutive months
• Time-limited employees, such as those whose positions are grant-funded, will be eligible for paid parental leave, so long as they have already worked for 12 months
• Paid parental leave is a benefit on top of any annual or other leave a state employee may also wish to take. Many employees currently use annual leave or other paid leave to continue receiving a paycheck while on parental leave.
• Employers won’t be required to pay out leave if employment is terminated during leave

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction officials on Thursday presented to the State Board of Education their proposed rules for DPI and K-12 school employees, based on the commission’s draft. Under the new law, the State Board of Education must adopt rules that are substantively similar to the commission’s.

The department’s interpretation of the requirement for 12 straight months of employment would mean a teacher cannot receive paid parental leave if they switch school systems until they have worked for their new school systems for 12 straight months, said Allison Schafer, the board’s attorney.

Charter schools can opt into the paid parental leave policy but don’t have to follow it, Schafer said.

The bill provides schools with $10 million to use toward substitute teachers during paid parental leave. That’s the only funding related to paid parental leave included in the bill, because classrooms have to have teachers, Schafer said.