School Assistance and Volunteer Service Leave
Full-time classified employees and administrative/professional faculty receive sixteen hours of paid leave per calendar year (pro-rated for part-time) to provide volunteer services through eligible non-profit organizations within or outside their communities. Such service may be provided as a member of a service organization or through authorized school assistance.
For more information, please see the Department of Human Resource Management (DHRM)'s Policy 4.40: School Assistance & Volunteer Service Leave. A summary Mason flyer is also available.
Volunteer Opportunities Include
- Members of volunteer fire departments and rescue squads[1]
- Voluntary service as part of an organized service project sponsored by a community, national or other service organization (Examples include Meals on Wheels, Boy/Girl Scouts, Big Brother/Big Sister, Red Cross)
- Donation of blood or blood products (not for pay)
School Assistance Includes
- Employees with children may be granted paid leave to meet with a teacher or administrator of a public or private preschool, elementary school, middle school, or high school concerning their children, step-children, or children for whom the employee has legal custody
- Attend a school function in which such children are participating
- Any employee may be granted leave to perform volunteer work approved by any teacher or school administrator to assist a public preschool, elementary, middle, or high school.
- Classified employees and administrative/professional faculty who are not parents of elementary, middle or high school age children may still use this leave to perform school-approved volunteer work for any public elementary school, middle school or high school. Part-time classified employees and administrative/professional faculty are entitled to this leave based on the proportion of a 40 hour week they work.
Leave Usage
Employees must receive approval from their supervisors prior to using volunteer leave. This leave is recorded in the same manner as other types of leave. If the employee uses more than the allotted 16 hours of leave for this purpose, the next appropriate type of leave will be charged, i.e. annual leave, compensatory leave, etc.
This leave is not carried over from year to year and there is no payout for unused volunteer leave upon separation. The Commonwealth of Virginia has specifically tailored this leave for classified employees and Mason has extended it to Administrative and Professional faculty. Instructional and research faculty are not eligible for this particular leave benefit.
[1] The Code of Virginia increases from 16 to 24 the number of hours of paid leave in any leave year (in addition to other paid leave) that may be allowed to state employees to serve with a volunteer fire department and rescue squad or auxiliary unit thereof. Note: This time is not in addition to the 16 hours of paid volunteer service leave to provide other volunteer services or school assistance.