Reshared post from +Molly Wood

On a totally unrelated note, I just found out that my sister-in-law, a public school teacher, had to pay her own substitute teacher so she could take a few extra days of maternity leave. The payout was a devastating amount, considering a lot of her maternity leave had to be unpaid because in California, teachers don't pay into state disability and therefore don't get the same maternity leave disability payments most corporate workers get. They basically get six weeks of paid leave, the rest unpaid or vacation/sick time, and then at some point they actually have to pay their own substitutes. I'm sorry, but WHAT??? How much more do we expect teachers to just lie down and take it before, yes, we get left with increasingly unqualified ones because WHO WOULD DO THAT JOB?? And WHO CAN FIX THIS?? /rant