The Kansas Board of Regents adopted a paid parental leave policy for all Kansas regent schools, including Wichita State.

The policy was adopted after former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer signed an executive order last November to provide paid parental leave to state employees in the Executive Branch. The order encouraged state universities to adopt a similar policy.

“In November of 2018, Executive Order No. 18-19 granted six weeks of paid parental leave to primary caregivers and three weeks of paid parental leave to secondary caregivers,” Regents spokesman Matt Keith told The Sunflower in an email. “However, that EO did not apply to state universities. The Regents started developing a similar policy to extend paid parental leave as a benefit to state university employees as well and approved that policy during the May Board meeting.”

Effective July 1, benefit-eligible employees at WSU will receive six weeks of paid leave after a birth or adoption if they are the primary caregiver and three weeks of paid leave if they are the secondary caregiver.

Before this new policy, WSU employees would have to use a combination of sick leave and vacation time, as well as unpaid leave guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

“FMLA is still in the mix,” Carody Bryan, WSU’s leave administrator said. “It’s just now we have this new benefit where individuals don’t have to use their accrued leave, at least for a portion of the time.”

According to an estimate done by the Regents, this new policy will cost WSU approximately $21,000 a year. This estimate took in a number of factors, including work that is paused while the employee takes leave, as well as the distribution of their workload to other employees during that time.

According to a university release on May 23, “The WSU Paid Parental Leave policy, which will outline the benefit in more detail, will be posted in the WSU Policy Manual (Chapter 3) on or before the benefit effective date.”

If employees have questions about this new policy, they can email the Human Resources Total Rewards team at [email protected].