Employee Leave Attend Child's Academic Activities

In 2009, the general assembly enacted the 'Parental Involvement in K-12 Education Act' (2009 act), which allowed an employee of an employer who is subject to the federal 'Family and Medical Leave Act' to take leave from work for the purpose of attending academic activities for or with the employee's child. Under the 2009 act, academic activities included parent-teacher conferences or meetings related to special education services, interventions, dropout prevention, attendance, truancy, or discipline issues. The leave was allowed for an employee who is the parent or legal guardian of a child enrolled in a public or private school or in a nonpublic home-based educational program in this state in kindergarten through twelfth grade.Leave under the 2009 act was limited to 6 hours per month and 18 hours in any academic year. The 2009 act permitted employers to:

• Restrict the use of leave in cases of emergency or other situations that may endanger a person's health or safety or if the employee's absence would halt the employer's service or production; and
• Limit the leave to 3-hour increments at a time and require the employee to submit written verification from the school or school district of the activity necessitating the leave.

An employee was required to provide the employer with at least one week's notice of the leave except in emergency situations.The 2009 act specified that the 2009 act would repeal on September 1, 2015. The repeal provision was never amended, so the 2009 act repealed on September 1, 2015.The bill recreates and reenacts the 2009 act with some modifications as follows:

• Requires school districts and institute charter schools to post on their websites, and include in district-wide or school-wide communications sent to parents and the community at large, information about the act;
• Requires the Colorado state advisory council for parent involvement in education to also provide information about the act to the extent possible within existing resources; and
• Continues the act indefinitely and amends the original repeal date in the 2009 act to specify that the repeal was to apply only to the 2009 act.

(Note: This summary applies to the reengrossed version of this bill as introduced in the second house.)