Veguez

Education Code section 44977 1 guarantees certificated public school employees up to five months of differential-pay sick leave (the certificated employee’s regular salary less the amount actually paid to a substitute teacher in his or her absence) “per illness or accident” if they are unable to work for an extended period due to a medical condition and have exhausted their accumulated full-pay sick leave. Under this provision, is a teacher who is injured as the result of a series of work-related accidents, receives treatment for her injuries during a nine-month leave of absence, returns to her job, works for nearly two years without incident and then takes another medical leave for injuries related to the original accidents, entitled to a second paid statutory leave? Although a simple causal relationship, however attenuated, between the original illness or accident and a subsequent medical condition or injury does not necessarily disqualify a certificated employee from a second period of differential-pay sick leave under section 44977, when, as here, the subsequent injury was known and potentially treatable during the original medical leave, the second leave falls within…