The bill aims to lease land for affordable housing for teachers.
A new bill could pave the way for school districts to turn vacant buildings into affordable housing for teachers and first responders.
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Josette Cordell, 33, gave birth to her daughter Colette in April 2023.
As an elementary school music teacher, she was not entitled to paid maternity leave. She took about a month’s worth of sick leave after Colette was born, then took two weeks of unpaid leave in May before summer vacation started.
“I used all my sick days,” Cordell said. “When I came back the following August, there was no handover date at all. I had to start all over again.”
Cordell lives in Arkansas. Until recently, Arkansas, like most states in the United States, did not guarantee paid parental leave for teachers. In fact, only 15 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, D.C.) and Washington, D.C., require school districts to provide paid parental leave for educators, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Among states that require paid parental leave, Arkansas is currently one of only two, along with Delaware, which provides up to 12 weeks of full pay. This is remarkable for a profession that is 77% female, with more teachers likely to be of childbearing age than any other worker in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
Colette was born three months before the state of Arkansas required districts to provide paid maternity leave. By the time Cordell gave birth to her second child, Calvin, in 2025, she knew 12 weeks of paid leave would make a huge difference for her family.
“I just wanted another baby. You know, I just felt like my heart was tightening,” Cordell said. But learning she could take paid time off this time gave her the extra push she needed. “It’s okay financially.”
Cordell’s fall 2025 maternity leave wasn’t just a good bonding time for her and Calvin, she said. It was also a precious moment for Cordell to spend with his daughter. Cordell oversaw her daughter learn how to use glitter, glue and scissors. And most importantly, she was able to comfort her daughter while she transitioned to big sister status.
“I was so grateful for not only the time I spent with Calvin and the time my body needed to heal, but also the extra time I was able to spend with my daughter,” Cordell said. “And I was also able to help her form that bond with her little brother, because the journey from being an only child to now having a baby at home was tough.”
“Most teachers cannot afford to go unpaid.”
Some school districts in states that do not require paid time off include it as an additional benefit. Still, a new study conducted by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation found that 59% of American teachers who had a child or adopted a child while on the job took no paid parental leave at all, and 17% took no leave at all.
“Most teachers cannot afford to remain unpaid,” said Inimai Chettiar, president of A Better Balance. Her nonprofit supports paid teacher leave programs in several states, among other family-friendly labor policies. “If these leave policies are not in place, teachers will be forced to return to the classroom before they are ready.”
New parents often use a combination of paid time off (if available), sick leave, vacation time, and unpaid time off to spend the first few months with their newborn. But often that is not enough, and many teachers feel they have to choose between the students they look after at school and their own children. According to a recent survey by the National Council on Teacher Qualification, 15% of teachers retiring cited personal reasons such as pregnancy, childbirth, or caring for a family member. And teacher departures are expensive, costing districts $11,000 to $25,000 in recruiting and administrative costs, and disrupting student outcomes through disruption and loss of experience.
“We’re asking too much of our teachers when it comes to trying to support their own families,” said Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Jennifer Hicks, 41, gave birth to her first child more than two months early in 2015, when she was teaching third grade. She said she thought she and her husband had planned it perfectly. Her due date was November 3, and her husband had graduated with a master’s degree and was scheduled to start a new job in December.
But everything changed when my son arrived early in the morning in late August. He spent 38 days in the NICU. “It was the most traumatic experience of becoming a mother,” she said. This experience later inspired her to write a book about premature babies.
A Gallup survey of nearly 2,000 K-12 teachers found that while 38% of teachers tried to plan the birth or adoption of a child at a time consistent with the school year, only 6% said their child was born outside of the school year.
“It is not a viable policy to tell women to plan their pregnancies and births around the summer holidays,” Chettiar said. “Teachers, like many female-dominated fields, are overworked and underpaid. The last thing teachers have to worry about is losing their pay or even their job when they have a child.”
After giving birth to her third baby in 2019, Hicks decided to stay home full time. It was a difficult decision, she said. Her students felt like part of her family.
“I put my heart and soul into teaching and felt like I was making a difference,” she said. “It was really hard to let go. But I mean, I’m a mom first, so I had to choose them.”
Fathers who teach teachers also need time off. “Day care is insanely expensive.”
Chettiar said there was significant bipartisan support for paid parental leave for teachers, especially in southern states. She said this is a great tool to address the teacher shortage and will make teachers feel more valued.
Stephen Walker, 36, works for Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. Although the state does not require paid parental leave for teachers, school districts still provide it. His second child will be born in early February, and he plans to take paid parental leave after his wife’s leave ends.
“It makes me kind of proud to work for FCPS, knowing that they’re one of the few school districts that I think actually has (paid parental leave),” Walker said.
Of the 17% of teachers who did not take vacation time, Andrea Marek Asch, a senior research consultant at Gallup, said there was a strong gender split, with 45% of men and 8% of women saying they did not take vacation time. A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that most fathers take less than two weeks of parental leave, but nearly half would like to take more. Several studies have found that parental leave is beneficial for babies, fathers’ brains, and couples and families in general.
Walker and his wife both work in school districts and know how disruptive life can be with a newborn, so they are especially grateful to be able to take time off with their second child.
“It definitely brings peace of mind,” Walker said. “Because even after the baby was born, I realized how many doctor’s visits I had to go to and how many days off I had to take.”
When teachers use up all their sick days to spend time with their newborns, there is no safety net in case they or their babies inevitably get sick later, Ash said.
“We traditionally think of teaching as a somewhat family-friendly profession, but this really challenges that idea,” Ash said.
Cedric Jacobson, 40, teaches science at a charter school in Massachusetts. His second child was born in June 2025, but he waited until January, when his wife returned to work, to take paid parental leave.
Jacobson said this period is legally considered “detention leave.” I really took this to heart.
“We spend a lot of time playing and reading together,” he said. “I have a handwritten piece of paper on my refrigerator with all the programs at the different libraries within a 15-minute drive.”
Jacobson said his family couldn’t afford to take all that time off without 12 weeks of paid leave. “Day care is extremely expensive now.”
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the care economy for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact Madeline at: memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ With X.
