Education Week - September 7, 2022 - 11

should count for pregnancy loss only
after a certain number of weeks.
She's hopeful that sharing educators'
stories will help inform and sway
districts. A long-standing culture of silence
and stigma around miscarriages,
particularly those in the early weeks of
pregnancy, has only recently started to
change.
Last year, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth
of Illinois and U.S. Rep. Ayanna
Pressley of Massachusetts, both Democrats,
introduced legislation that would
ensure employers provide at least three
days of paid leave for workers after a
pregnancy loss, failed fertility treatment,
a failed adoption arrangement,
or other diagnoses affecting fertility.
In both the Senate and the House, the
bills were referred to committee without
a vote.
This summer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker,
a Democrat, signed into law a bill
that mandates that employers-including
school districts-provide two weeks
of unpaid leave for workers who experience
pregnancy loss, failed adoptions,
unsuccessful reproductive procedures,
and other diagnoses affecting fertility.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican,
also recently signed a bill that gives
three days of paid bereavement leave
after a miscarriage or a stillbirth to
people who work for a public college,
a local government, or the state-but
school districts are not included in the
new law.
Similar bills have been introduced
in at least 10 other states this year and
last, said Elizabeth Nash, a state policy
analyst at the Guttmacher Institute,
a research and policy organization
focused on sexual and reproductive
health. Major cities, such as Pittsburgh,
Boston, and Portland, Ore., have also
recently enacted similar policies.
Bereavement leave is already fairly
common among private employers,
and a growing number of companies,
including Goldman Sachs and Pinterest,
are starting to expand their policies
to include pregnancy loss.
" I think people are beginning to realize
that pregnancy and pregnancy
outcomes are sometimes very complicated, "
Nash said. " People have the
sense that once you're pregnant, and
you have a wanted pregnancy, at the
end you have a baby-and that's not
always the case. "
These types of policies could become
more controversial in the aftermath of
the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision
to overturn the constitutional right to
abortion. At the NEA meeting, one delegate
opposed the contract language,
fearing it would give personhood to a
fetus.
Nash said many of the bills are tailored
specifically to miscarriages and
stillbirths, rather than the more general
umbrella of pregnancy loss, which
could apply to abortion. Boston, Portland,
Ore., and Pittsburgh do include
abortion in their policies, which has
sparked criticism from conservatives,
including former Vice President Mike
Pence.
Women share stories that are all
too common
On the first day of school this year,
Kathryn Vaughn, who was almost nine
weeks pregnant, started bleeding. She
went to the doctor, who confirmed
that she was experiencing a miscarriage
and prescribed her medication
to help the process along.
The news was devastating: Vaughn,
an elementary art teacher in rural
Tennessee, had welcomed her first
child last year and was eager to expand
her family again. But she wasn't
able to take time to process the loss
or physically recuperate. Instead,
Vaughn went to work the next day,
even though she was still actively miscarrying.
" I
didn't anticipate how much physical
pain [there would be], and then
dealing with all the blood, " she said.
" It's like you're going through a labor,
contractions, while you're trying to
smile at children-it's monstrous. "
Vaughn had drained her banked
sick leave last year to scrape together
a couple weeks of maternity leave.
At the start of this school year, she
received an additional nine sick days
and three personal days, but she didn't
want to use any of them for the miscarriage:
" I would like to try again to
have another baby and would like to
have more than just nine days with
them. "
" I used to think [teaching] is a great
job for being a mom-you're going to
work the same hours as your kids, everyone
will understand what it's like,
most teachers are wives and mothers,
too, " Vaughn said. " But it's not like
that. "
This spring, May Saengpraseuth
Alirad, an elementary social worker
in Chicago, found out that she was experiencing
a " missed miscarriage " at
eight weeks pregnant, meaning that
her baby was no longer alive, but her
body had not yet recognized the loss.
Still experiencing pregnancy symptoms,
she continued going to work,
crying every day.
" There were times when I had to
run into the closet to cry-it was just
so traumatic for me, " she said.
A few weeks later, her water broke.
Over the weekend, she experienced
contractions and eventually expelled
the pregnancy tissue at home.
Alirad went to work the next day,
but was too distraught to focus. She
took the rest of the week off to grieve
and plan a memorial service for her
baby, whom she named Angel, and
assumed the time off would be covered
by Chicago Public Schools' bereavement
leave policy, which covers
the death of a child. But her manager
called her to tell her that the policy
didn't apply to miscarriages.
" It was the invalidation of it, " Alirad
said. " By you not giving me the
time off, you're telling me, 'That
was nobody. Get over it. Go back to
work, and act like everything's OK.' I
couldn't. I couldn't act like everything
was so OK. I was so distraught; I was
crying every day. "
Alirad took a leave of absence for
two weeks through short-term disability.
During that time, she began to
heal. By the end of the two weeks-the
amount of time CPS educators can
take for bereavement leave for the
death of a child-she was able to get
through the day without crying.
" I just needed the 10 days that I
should have gotten, " Alirad said. " I
needed that time off, I needed to process.
I needed to be home with my
family. I needed to sleep.
" When you find out that you're
pregnant and you see those two lines,
your whole brain rewires itself. You're
planning now for a baby. When you
find out you lost your baby, you're ...
grieving the future that you'll never
have. The future that you'd have with
this baby that you've never met but
you love so much already. "
Alirad is now five months pregnant
with her " rainbow baby. " But because
she had a prior medical leave last fall
and then took an additional leave of
absence for her miscarriage in the
spring, her short-term disability insurance
will not renew in time for the
birth. She's been told she only has one
week left of short-term disability to
use after birth instead of 12. The decision
feels like another slap in the face,
Alirad said, because if she had gotten
to use bereavement leave after her
miscarriage, her short-term disability
would have reset in time to use it for a
maternity leave.
Some educators find comfort in
advocacy
After her miscarriage, Alirad started
an online petition on change.org, calling
for local, state, and federal governments
to include pregnancy loss in
their bereavement leave policies. The
petition, to date, has received nearly
47,000 signatures.
In a statement, a CPS spokesperson
said the district offers a competitive
benefits package with a multitude of
options for educators.
" While our bereavement policy
does not directly address miscarriages,
many of our CPS employees
use a variety of options available to
them under our current CPS benefit
package to take time off during difficult
circumstances, " the statement
said. " As always, CPS strives to treat
our colleagues with compassion and
ensure they have the resources available
to heal and recover from physical
and mental health issues. "
Still, Alirad doesn't want any other
parent to experience the pain and invalidation
she felt. She plans to work
with politicians, like Duckworth, to
continue her advocacy. It brings her
peace to imagine that Angel, her unborn
child, is proud of her.
Last year, O'Donnell, who taught
1st grade in Washington, D.C., was
denied paid family leave after her stillbirth.
She made headlines for sharing
her story, in which she said that she
had asked for eight weeks of family
leave to recover physically but was
told that she wasn't eligible since she
was " only caring for [her]self. "
O'Donnell's story has since inspired
the city council to expand its bereavement
leave policy to offer two weeks
of paid time off to employees who lose
a child under the age of 21, including
stillbirths. The city government also
clarified that stillbirths or miscarriages
would be eligible for six weeks
of medical leave.
" My goal was met in terms of making
sure this doesn't happen to people
after me, " O'Donnell said. Still, she
has since quit teaching and is suing the
District of Columbia Public Schools
and the D.C. Office of Human Rights
over the denial of her ability to use
paid family leave.
A DCPS spokesperson declined to
comment on ongoing litigation.
O'Donnell is continuing her advocacy
outside of education. She started
Aaliyah in Action, a nonprofit that
sends self-care packages for families
who have experienced stillbirths or
infant death. She also is a founding
member of PUSH for Empowered
Pregnancy, a nonprofit that works to
lower the rates of preventable stillbirths.
" This
is getting me through, " she
said.
In addition to the push for expanded
bereavement leave in teacher contracts,
Mancinelli and her colleague
George Kemery are developing resources
for administrators on how to
support staff who have experienced
pregnancy loss, and toolkits for both
administrators and teachers themselves
for announcing a pregnancy
loss to students in age-appropriate
ways. They also work with grieving
educators so they have a support system
in place before they return to the
classroom after loss.
This work " seems commonsense to
me, but I do this in honor of my son, "
Mancinelli said. " One of the quotes
that we associate with him is a song
lyric-'You are meant for amazing
things.' And that is why I do this. I
can't parent him like I parent my living
children, so this is what I do. "
Getting Reading Groups Right
| WEBINAR
Small-group instruction in reading
is one of the most used approaches
to differentiate learning, but studies
suggest traditional ability-based
classroom groups don't always
work, and their structure can make
a big difference in their effects.
Explore how you can help your students
succeed with Education Week Assistant
Editor Sarah D. Sparks and her guests as
they discuss what the research says and
what it means for reading instruction.
You'll gain insights into:
* Effective research-backed strategies
for reading group design
* Boosting student reading achievement
* Helping students feel more
connected to their school
SPEAKERS:
* MATTHEW BURNS, Professor of
Special Education, University of
Missouri; Director, University of Missouri
Center for Collaborative Solutions
for Kids, Practice, and Policy
MODERATOR:
* SARAH D. SPARKS, Assistant
Editor, Education Week
Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022 2-3 PM ET
https://edw.link/ReadingRight
Sponsored by
EDUCATION WEEK | September 7, 2022 | www.edweek.org | 11
http://www.change.org https://www.edw.link/ReadingRight http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - September 7, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 7, 2022
