BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Gov. Kay Ivey is calling for eight weeks of paid maternity leave for Alabama teachers and state employees, a move that could make the state more competitive in recruiting and retaining workers.
“It is the right thing to do,” said Gina Maiola, Ivey’s communications director, in an email response to Alabama Daily News. “This would help with recruitment and retention, especially among our teachers, and it would likely have a minimal upfront cost.”
Legislation has not been filed and details about the length of time and if it will apply to men are still being discussed.
Other states already offer teachers paid parental leave and it’s a common benefit among private industry. Alabama Education Association government relations director Allison King said Alabama is lagging behind.
“This is not some foreign concept,” King said. “We’re kind of behind the curve in considering this option for employees.”
Several neighboring states, including Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, have added paid parental leave for teachers and state employees in recent years.
Rep. Debbie Wood, R-Valley, first became aware of the issue in 2023 while talking with teachers in her community. Wood was surprised to hear they wouldn’t encourage others to become teachers and asked why.
“(Teachers) said, ‘First of all, we love these children. That’s one of the reasons that we chose this profession,” Wood recalled. “But we don’t even have a way to have our own children being in this field.’”
“I thought, we’re asking them to come into a profession and take care of other people’s children, and then we don’t even allow them to have their own,” Wood said. “So it was like a light bulb went off.”
Determined to address what she saw as a glaring oversight, Wood partnered with Sen. Vivian Figures, D-Mobile, to introduce companion bills during the 2024 session.
A Senate committee passed Figures’ bill but made big changes, including cutting the length of paid leave to six weeks. And although Figures convinced colleagues to up the length of paid leave to eight weeks on the floor of the Senate late in the session, former Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed refused to send the bill to the other chamber for consideration. That bill would have applied to men with new babies and covered women who had suffered stillbirths. Some legislative leaders were concerned about the potential cost that had not been factored into the state’s budgets.
Ivey said she is working with Figures and Rep. Ginny Shaver, R-Leesburg, to bring a bill to the legislature. Wood said she is looking forward to working on the bill. King said she was told a bill will be filed as early as this week.
With Ivey’s backing and renewed interest in the legislation, the focus now shifts to the cost.
Senate Education Budget Chairman Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said he supports paid parental leave for state employees and teachers.
“I think it’s time,” Orr said. He cautioned that costs remain a key issue.
“The cost all depends on where the lines are drawn,” Orr said. “As far as how long (leave) is, who’s included, is it just maternal or is it both father and mother?”
Pinning down numbers has been difficult. King said the latest data from the state officials shows between 2,000 and 2,200 K-12 female teachers could have been covered by maternity leave between 2019 and 2023. In 2024, that number dropped to 1,500.
“Those numbers show that people are having fewer babies, probably because they don’t have a benefit like this,” King said.
Right now, teachers must save up sick leave – typically earning one day for each month of employment – to cover time off for maternity leave. At that rate, it takes nearly five years to accumulate enough sick leave for eight weeks of maternity leave.
Federal law allows additional leave, but it’s unpaid. That creates another burden, King said, because teachers must cover the cost of their substitutes while they’re out. How that’s done differs by system, but in many cases, unpaid leave means out-of-pocket expenses for teachers.
“This would be a way that we could show them that we value them in a way where we want them to be able to spend time with and prioritize their own children just like they prioritize everybody else’s children,” King said.
Wood said she hopes lawmakers will extend paid leave to include fathers, but for now, her focus is on getting a bill passed.
“If we really value the family like we project that we do…we would pass this in a minute.”