OLD TOWN, Maine – Does anyone know how many paid days off teachers are allowed to take in Regional School Unit 34 in Old Town, Maine?

And does anyone know how much teachers in that district were collectively paid for those days off in 2013-14?

EAGnews has been trying to find the answers to those questions for the past few weeks. We’ve sent emails and left telephone messages, but nobody from the district can find a free moment to answer our very simple questions.

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The reason we’re wondering about the sick day policy, and the resulting cost, is because RSU 34 teachers seem to take an awful lot of sick and personal days.

In 2013-14, approximately 150 teachers took a combined 1,195 sick days and 642 personal days, which averages out to about 12 paid days off per teacher.

We managed to get that much information from the district through a formal request.

In other school districts around the nation, that sort of absenteeism ends up costing taxpayers a great deal of money, in salary paid to teachers who are sitting home, as well as costs for substitute teachers.

It also has an impact on students. Study after study has determined that kids learn very little with substitute teachers, and lose a lot of learning time when their teachers are frequently absent.

High absentee rates in school districts are usually prompted by very generous paid absentee policies. The more paid days off a school district offers, the more teachers and other employees tend to take.

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The only exceptions seem to be when districts also offer generous reimbursement policies for unused sick days. Attendance improves, but the payouts are still pretty expensive.

Since we couldn’t get any more detailed answers from RSU 34 officials, regarding their high absence rate, we looked to a neighboring district of similar size for clues.

Regional School Unit 26 in Orono, Maine has 160 certified staff members, most of whom are probably teachers.

RSU 26 has a teacher union contract with an extremely liberal paid absence policy. Union members are allowed to take up to 15 paid sick days per school year, along with two personal business days and two discretionary days.

That means a teacher could potentially take 19 paid sick days per year, which is more than 10 percent of a typical 180 day school year.

In 2013-14, RSU 26 certified staff took a combined 1,321 sick and personal days, which averages out to 8.2 days per employee. That’s relatively few, considering the number they could take.

In any case, RSU 26 paid employees a combined $279,678 for days they were not at work in 2013-14. And they took fewer days off than RSU 34 teachers.

That means the total spent on absent teachers in RSU 34 is probably more than that. Our estimate is somewhere around $300,000 to $350,000.

That’s just an educated guess, because district officials seem to think that the manner in which they spend tax dollars is none of the public’s business.

Perhaps some interested taxpayers who live in the district could get actual figures out of them, and respond appropriately if they discover that a lot of money is being wasted on teachers who aren’t working.