SB 1383
Strengthening the Family School Partnership Act During Emergencies
Senate Bill 1383 will provide working parents with the essential job protection they need to care for their children without risking their job during an emergency.
As a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic, 99.6% of California’s K-12 school districts closed, impacting 6.2 million students and their families. During the 2018-19 school year, wildfires and similar disasters resulted in school closures impacting more than 1.2 million students. A vast majority of children live in families where both parents work or families that are headed by a single parent. That means that when the child’s school or daycare is not available, a parent must leave work in order to provide the care that the child needs. This bill would protect these families by providing job-protected leave to parents whose children’s daycare or school closes due to an emergency for the duration of the emergency.
California has recognized the challenges faced by working parents by passing the Family School Partnership Act, which provides up to 40 hours of job-protected, unpaid time off per year for parents to participate in their child’s school or licensed day care facility’s activities, and by strengthening these protections through the Family Engagement Act in 2015. SB 1383 expands on these essential protections by ensuring that all parents, regardless of the size of their employer, are able to care for their child when an emergency strikes and their child’s school or place of care becomes unavailable for the duration of that emergency. Parents should not be
forced to count down the hours until they will be fired for caring for their child during a pandemic or natural disaster.
This bill will allow working parents to keep their jobs while fulfilling their parental obligations during crises. The bill will also benefit employers by strengthening employee morale and job retention for working parents.
No Californian should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for their child.
AB 3216 provides emergency paid sick leave to all California workers, expands family and pregnancy leave to all employees, makes leave easier to access during an emergency, provides a right of recall for workers who have been laid off in the heavily COVID-impacted industries of hotels, airport hospitality, event centers and building services, and ensures worker retention for workers in those industries whose employers’ ownership structure may change during the crisis.
Hollywood NOW has joined 275+ advocacy organizations, worker centers, labor unions, service providers, religious congregations, community groups, affordable housing developers, public interest lawyers, public health and safety organizations, and many more uniting across lines of race, class, and geography to propose concrete solutions to the many hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.