CHARLESTON, W. Va. – West Virginia lawmakers could soon tweak a state law to crack down on teacher absenteeism, despite protests from the state’s teachers union.

Kanawha County Schools Superintendent Ron Duerring addressed the issue of teacher absenteeism at a state Senate Education Committee this week where he proposed shifting to an accrued days off system that would give administrators the ability to punish teachers who abuse it, the Charleston Daily Mail reports.

Currently, teachers are awarded 15 days off at the beginning of each school year, but Duerring said a small percentage of educators abuse the privilege and it’s hurting students. He proposed a better system would allow teachers to earn 1.5 days off for each month of the year, which would prevent them from taking advantage of the system.

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Kanawha County spends $4.6 million per year on substitute teachers, officials said.

Duerring and Kanawha County Schools human resources director Carol Hamric told senators most of the district’s 2,000 teachers are responsible with their days off, but 200 to 300 take all 15 days each year, whether they need to or not, the newspaper reports.

“They have them, they feel it’s an entitlement, and they burn them. That’s the word that’s used,” Hamric said.

Christine Campbell, president of the West Virginia branch of the American Federation of Teachers union, dismissed school officials’ concerns as “teacher bashing,” according to the Daily Mail.

“It’s punishing everyone for a select number of people,” she said. “We’re not talking about bad teachers; we’re talking about attendance.”

We believe the topics blend together. Responsible teachers should recognize that a substitute teacher cannot replace the time lost when a real teacher is absent, and would use their days off sparingly.

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If the attendance issue only involves a relatively few teachers, as Campbell suggests, then most won’t be affected if the law is changed. The reality is that many, if not most, laws are aimed at a select number of individuals who abuse the system. That’s nothing new.

Suggesting that school officials and lawmakers are looking into the absentee problem simply as a “teacher bashing” opportunity is ludicrous.

But it’s not quite as ludicrous as forcing taxpayers to shell out millions, year after year, to pay for substitutes to cover unnecessary teacher absences.