Most schools in our area are offering a hybrid learning. Parents can choose to send their kids to school or keep them at home with distant learning. Some of our employees are wanting to keep their kids home for distant learning even though they have the option to send them to school. My question is this…if a parent chooses to keep their child home (distant learning) but has the option to send them to school, do we have to pay them for the paid leave under FFCRA? I may have missed it completely but I don’t see that addressed on the DOL website.
My understanding is that the FFCRA credit is only for illness-related issues. Not to be political, but given the Trump administration’s desire to get children back to school, I don’t anticipate that the rules will be relaxed to the point of covering parent staying home with children attending virtual classes…
One of the qualifying reasons under FFCRA is “caring for a child whose school or place of care is closed (or child care provider is unavailable) for reasons related to COVID-19” So when schools closed at the beginning of COVID, many of our employees chose to stay home with their children. Now that schools are re-opening in this hybrid style, I feel that since the employees have an option (the school is open but they are choosing to stay home for distant learning) the employer would not have to pay them during this time.