California Education Code Certificated Sick Leave: Days and Carryover

California certificated employee sick leave starts at a minimum of 10 fully paid days per school year for anyone working a full five-day week, with part-time educators earning a prorated share, unused days rolling over indefinitely, and further protections kicking in once that bank is drawn down.¹

How Many Days You Get

Every certificated employee who works five days a week earns at least 10 days of paid sick leave per school year for illness or injury. A district’s governing board can grant more, but 10 is the statutory floor. Part-time employees receive a proportional share: three days a week works out to six sick days (3 ÷ 5 × 10).¹

You don’t have to accrue the leave before using it. The statute lets you take a sick day at any point during the school year, including day one. Pay on a sick day equals what you would have earned had you worked.

What Your District Can Ask For

The Education Code requires each governing board to adopt its own rules for how employees prove illness or injury.¹ There is no statewide threshold requiring a doctor’s note after a specific number of days. Some districts require documentation after three consecutive absences, others set different triggers, and some handle it through the collective bargaining agreement. Check your district’s policy or your union contract for the specific rule that applies to you.

Using Sick Leave for a Family Member

California’s kin care law lets you use at least half of your annual sick leave entitlement to care for a family member’s illness or preventive care, and the choice to designate a sick day as kin care rests with you rather than the district.² Covered family members include a spouse, registered domestic partner, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or a designated person.

Separately, the Education Code lets certificated employees use personal necessity leave for a family member’s serious illness. Together, these provisions mean an educator handling a parent’s surgery or a child’s ongoing treatment has statutory grounds to use paid leave without risking discipline.

Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Recovery

The Education Code specifically permits certificated employees to use regular sick leave and extended differential leave for absences caused by pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, and recovery.¹ Pregnancy-related absences draw from the same bank as any other health condition, with the same carryover and differential pay rules.

Federal law adds more. Title VII requires employers to treat pregnancy-related conditions the same as other medical conditions affecting an employee’s ability to work. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act prohibits employers from forcing an employee onto leave when a reasonable accommodation would allow her to keep working.³ If a modified schedule or a temporary duty reassignment would keep a pregnant teacher in the classroom, the district can’t put her on leave instead.

Carryover and Accumulation

Unused sick leave rolls over from year to year with no statutory cap on accumulation, so an educator who stays healthy in the early career years can build a substantial reserve.¹ That reserve serves two purposes: a cushion for a serious illness later, and, as covered below, extra service credit at retirement.

Districts may grant more than the 10-day minimum, and those additional days accumulate the same way. Collective bargaining often produces schedules of 12 or more days per year.

Transferring Sick Leave to a New District

When a certificated employee leaves one California district for another, the accumulated sick leave balance transfers to the new employer. Classified employees have a parallel right under Education Code Section 45202.⁴ The departure can’t have been a termination for cause, and districts cannot require new hires to waive the right to transferred leave.

Track this carefully during a job change. Your new district needs to request the balance from the former employer, and the former employer must provide verification including total accumulated days, service period, and the length of the workday those days were based on. If the paperwork slips, you can lose leave you’re entitled to keep.

Extended Leave at Differential Pay

Once a certificated employee has used up all regular and accumulated sick leave and still can’t return to work, the Education Code adds five school months of leave at reduced pay. During this period, the only deduction from the employee’s salary is the cost of a substitute hired to cover the classroom. If no substitute is hired, the deduction equals what a substitute would have been paid.⁵

Several limits apply:

You get one five-month window per illness or accident, not a renewable annual benefit.
Regular and accumulated sick leave must be used first. The five-month period begins only after the sick leave bank is empty.
If the school year ends before the five months run out, the remainder carries into the following year.

When All Paid Leave Runs Out

After both the sick leave bank and the five-month differential period are exhausted, a certificated employee who still cannot return faces a hard cliff. Under Education Code Section 44978.1, an educator medically unable to resume duties must be placed on a reemployment list for 24 months if probationary, or 39 months if permanent. If the employee becomes medically able to return within that window, the district must offer a position. Once the window closes, the reemployment right ends.

The stakes are high at this stage. No paycheck is coming in, and the clock is running on both employment rights and benefits. Anyone approaching this point should be working closely with a union representative and looking at whether federal leave protections can extend their options.

How Federal Law Fits In

FMLA

The Family and Medical Leave Act covers all local educational agencies, including public school boards and public elementary and secondary schools, regardless of headcount.⁶ To qualify, you need 12 months of service with the employer, 1,250 hours worked in the prior 12 months, and a worksite with 50 or more employees within 75 miles.

Eligible employees get up to 12 workweeks per year for a serious health condition, the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition.⁷ FMLA leave is unpaid, but California educators typically use paid sick leave concurrently. In practical terms, FMLA gives you job protection during the weeks you’re spending down your sick leave balance.

ADA

The Americans with Disabilities Act can require a district to grant additional unpaid leave as a reasonable accommodation beyond FMLA or state entitlements. It doesn’t set a fixed duration. Whether more time is reasonable turns on a case-by-case assessment of undue hardship. When ADA leave is granted, the employer is generally expected to hold the position, and reassignment to a vacant position should be considered before termination if that isn’t feasible.

What Unused Sick Leave Does for Your CalSTRS Pension

For most California educators, banked sick leave is more than an emergency reserve. At retirement, CalSTRS converts accumulated unused sick leave into additional service credit, which increases the pension directly.⁸

The formula divides your total unused sick leave days by the number of base service days required for a full-time position, which cannot be fewer than 175 days.⁹ An educator retiring with 175 banked days receives one full year of additional service credit. Someone with 88 days gets roughly half a year. That extra credit is multiplied by the CalSTRS benefit factor and your final compensation, so even a fraction of a year meaningfully changes the monthly pension check.

Two cautions. Only unused sick leave for which you were entitled to full pay counts toward the conversion. Differential pay leave that you actually consumed doesn’t add to the retirement bank because it was already used. And the conversion happens at service retirement based on what your last employer or employers certify, so verify your district’s records before you file.¹⁰

1
California Legislative Information. California Code, Education Code – EDC 44978
2
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 233
3
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Should Know About the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act
4
California Legislative Information. California Code, Education Code – EDC 45202
5
California Legislative Information. California Code Education Code 44977
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28S: Rules for Certain School Employees under the Family and Medical Leave Act
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 2612 – Leave Requirement
8
California Legislative Information. California Code EDC 22717
9
California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Service Credit
10
California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Employer Directive 2026-03 – Unused Sick Leave