If the Baltimore City school system wants to reduce its $4.6 million severance packages, it might want to take lessons from the private industry, which often limits the amount of vacation and sick time that can be carried from one year to the next.

The school system employs a liberal policy that allows administrators, teachers and other officials to enhance their paychecks with an accrual of sick and vacation times that is unheard of in private businesses.

In the private industry, employers are not required to give paid time off for sick days or vacation days. They are considered benefits, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In Baltimore, school administrators earn two days of sick leave each month. Administrators can be paid for a maximum of 140 days accumulated during their career, according to a payroll official. Teachers, who do not get a paid vacation, earn at the most 315 sick days during their career. Should the administrator or teacher leave, he or she can collect the payout for those sick days.

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Marietta English, spokeswoman for the Baltimore Teachers Union, said new instructors earn 10 sick days a year while veteran teachers earn 15 days a year.

The highest payout was handed to former school board general counsel Anthony Trotta, who pulled in a $140,476 severance package although his base salary was $135,200, according to payroll records obtained by The Examiner under the Maryland Public Information Act. (Click here to view the entire Excel file that shows the pay of public school employees.)

The Examiner has requested Trotta’s contract from the school system, detailing the amount of sick and vacation time the city paid to him.

“That’s a lot of money to be paying out,” said James Williams, co-founder of Parents Organizing Parents, in response to the uncapped vacation and sick pay administrators may receive.

“This takes away from the schools’ operational budget,” Williams said. “It’s not like they are in the military. They chose these jobs, I thought, because they love children, rather than money.”

Williams’ organization is a Baltimore community watchdog group that lobbies on behalf of better city schools.

Kay Moran, senior consultant with Bolton Partners Inc., said a lot of school systems allow sick leave to be rolled into the next year but said Baltimore’s is “pretty generous. That’s almost worth a year of sick leave.”

Moran, who conducted a survey on private employers, said most employers limit the amount of sick leave that is carried over year after year.

She said the public sector’s leave programs are usually more liberal. “The reason that you hear benefits for the public employees getting more is because salaries not great as private employers,” Moran said.

Examiner intern Kaitlyn Seith contributed to this report.
drowley@baltimoreexaminer.com