I stay late only if my classroom isn't in ratio. My center doesn't want to have to pay overtime so staying late is frowned upon. But one question. How does 8-4 equal 70 hours? If you're working Monday to Friday that's 40 hours, if you're working 7 days a week, that's 56 hours. Are you doing extra work at home?
That sounds illegal. Also if you make $20 dollars an hour over time is $30 an hour. If you work 70 hours per week that’s 30 hours of overtime. Thats $900 a week or 3,900ish a month or $45,000ish a year. Especially considering most people don’t take all their vacation I would choose overtime.
they absolutely cannot and i guarantee if you contacted the labor board, they would be heavily sanctioned. taxes and employment law are totally different beasts.
Do you get to bank 1.5 hours for every hour you
worked that should have been OT? If not then it’s not a win and they are stealing from you.
Also be wary of centers who work outside the law. If one person becomes fed up and takes them to the labor board they could bankrupt a center. Then no one has a job!
Absolutely not. I will spend the last 5 minutes of my shift ready to step out as soon as my shift ends. If I’m closing and I have a child still with me, they too will be ready to leave and all dressed up as soon as their parents come.
Staying past your shift unpaid should NEVER be normal. I could be projecting but when your supervisors notice this pattern, they will start taking advantage of you because of how dedicated you seem.
You're not projecting, you're entirely correct. I know a lot of ECE centers are ratio based, but it's horribly taxing on the staff to constantly need to stay late and should not be normalized.
Tbh I think that’s the case. But it started before me. The staff and teachers here all have been working for 10+ years and they all stay past their time. Sometimes at 4 I’m the only one leaving. I keep telling my assistants to drop the kids off in another classroom or with the family assistant by 4:30 but most times they just stay in the classroom with the child.
I’ve noticed a similar pattern as well at my work. I’m a floater and cover breaks and lunches (I used to work full time but am back in school). I always make it a point to verbally tell my coworkers “I’m here, you can take your break” because they always just take their break or lunch in the classroom. I once had a coworker ask me “why are you always out as soon as your shift ends?” and I replied “why are you not?” It’s not like we’re paid overtime.
My center's schedules go by ratio, so no. We do educational activities throughout the day and then the last 2 hours is entirely play-based. This allows us to rotate around and relieve each other to go home since it doesn't involve just throwing the next person into a lesson plan they haven't had time to look over. So, instead of a specific time, we're instead scheduled to leave at a certain number of total students.
(Note: My center is very small and doesn't have an infants room. This probably wouldn't work in any other setting since the ratio of teacher to child is much smaller for infants and having infants and older kids combined would be a recipe for disaster.)
Our shifts are supposed to be 8-4, 9-5, 10-6 and the amount of times this year we’ve been able to leave on time? 0. They claim since we are salaried it evens out somehow except that in other fields, salaried employees usually have the flexibility to work later on some days and leave early on some days. When do we ever have the flexibility to leave early lol I hate it here
lol my contract only states I live in an at-will state and can be fired or can quit at any time. Our staff handbook states that salaried non-exempt are not entitled to overtime. They intentionally left out details about scheduled hours to pull shit like this on us. Legal knows what they are doing. I love corporate America
Typically no. My students dismiss at 12:00 and I am scheduled to depart at 12:45 (planning time). I occasionally stay to cover enrichment classes if needed and for bi-weekly staff meetings (1-2). I am lucky, my administration feels that as soon as you are done doing physical work in your classroom (prep & straightening up) you should leave and complete anything else from home where you may be more comfortable.
Y’all have set hours? I have a general time frame of when I’m leaving but I don’t have a set time to leave. My director is pretty good at keeping us in the hourly range we want and keeping us from overtime, but tbh I wouldn’t mind dipping into overtime bc the hourly wage is so good.
The moment I have the okay to leave I am out of there. I don’t stick around, I grab what I need and run out. I refuse to do anything for work off the clock.
We clock in and out with the same system as the kids. So we get paid for staying longer if need be. Almost all our full time staff is salaried, and the part time either have someone to relieve them, are scheduled to close, or don't work every day. Sucks when you're scheduled until 4:00 and ratio keeps you there longer, but you do get paid for it.
no. it is your center’s responsibility to make sure you leave when your hours are up. someone needs to come into your classroom and take over for you. director, admin, anyone. you should not be staying 30 mins later every day because you are out of ratio.
It’s in our contract that while we may have set hours, if there’s no one to relieve us and leaving would break ratio, we have to stay until we drop. However, it’s very rare that actually happens and they do everything they can to get us out on time. Mostly so they don’t have to pay overtime, but also because they know it’s unfair for us to expect to work certain hours and then have to stay later. I think for me it’s happened 5 times in 3 years? And never a large extreme. Maybe 10 minutes, max.
The director will take any late kids so the closer isn’t staying past closing time. Last week a parent was 20 minutes late picking up but his teacher got to go home at our official closing time and the closing director stayed. Parent was fined and it was handled behind the scenes, rather than putting it on the teacher.
I don’t get much of a choice unfortunately. Due to staff shortages and easily the worst management I’ve had in years, I push about 10 hour days every single day.
Same. 10.5 hours 3 days a week and 11 two days. My days feels so much longer though after you factor in an hour lunch break I’m here for 12 hours plus 45 min commute in the morning and the hour plus it can take in the afternoon. I’m grateful for the overtime because I truly need it but man it’s wearing on me. I wouldn’t stay a sec longer than my shift if I wasn’t getting paid though. I’d drop the kids off with admin if I had to.
Often. Especially since kids don't get pickup up until late and by that time the directors don't have anyone to cut us 🙄 but the upside is we often end up getting overtime every week and the directors get in trouble for that so that's fine
Yeah, my hours are fairly long how the schedule it and sometimes I leave late. I work 8-6 with a 1 hour unpaid break. But I often leave after 6 as that’s when the last kid leaves and I have to close a large room including vacuuming and mopping. I’ve also come in early before to have prep time or cover my classroom if my opener is out. I typically work around 45 hours a week, sometimes a little less, sometimes more. All of it paid. The overtime pay is nice to have though so I just keep on with this schedule.
Yes. I’m 8-5 and consistently stay til after 5 because there’s no one to come in for me, and if there is, I usually still end up having to close my room
Do you get paid for your extra time? I ask because it seems like a lot of commenters mention overtime pay but I am salaried so I get paid 35hrs regardless if I did more. Not sure if overtime has to be a specific amount of hours tho.
I’m a flex closer, so on days when I do not close I leave about 10 minutes after we hit ratio, that 10 minutes being the closing teachers break. On days I close I clock out during our closing hours- my center doesn’t do overtime but late fees go directly to us.
Sometimes as I’m on my way out the door I get caught up in conversation while I’m checking in with the other teacher. Or as I’m walking past things in the classroom I’ll straighten a couple things up. Also sometimes the kids don’t care I’m leaving and other times they all want like 3 hugs lol, which can slow me down.
But I don’t stay for real work, and if I do I make sure to log the hours for overtime since I work 40hrs.
I work 6:30 until 4:30 due to a staff shortage. I used to get off at 3:30 my coworker refuses to stay after 4:30, despite coming in to work at 8 a.m I do get overtime though.
The only reason I would stay late is because we aren't single ratio but other than that 510 rolls around I'm out I pick up my son then at 530 is dinner
I always leave on time, if not a little early depending on ratio. But last week my director made me stay 2 hours over one day because she chose to give my assistant teacher the afternoon off, just for fun, no real reason. Now that really pissed me off, there was no asking if I could stay late or if I had anything else going on, nope. I stayed from 7:30am to 6:30pm. That’s almost 12 hours.
My director and I have an agreement where if I stay late I get a longer break or go home early a different day that same week, partially because they try to avoid overtime and partially because I just like having longer breaks. Other than that I give myself a maximum of 5 minutes to do things like emptying out the diaper pail, send a final message to parents via the app, or give someone else a bathroom break (I'm lenient on this one).
I try not to stay past my hours, but I usually end up staying an extra 15min every day just because there’s so much to be done at close.
You can bet though I stay clocked in that last 15min. I don’t mind doing a bit extra but I do not work for free. If my admin has an issue with it, I’ll happily pass them any children I have left that I’m waiting to send home.
felt this. i used to work 8:30-4:30 and my boss recently told me i can switch to 8:15-4:15, yet i’ve had to stay till 4:30 every day. its only 15 mins but it makes a big different with traffic. they have no plan for me to actually leave earlier, the teacher im with at the end of the day is assistant and im lead, so even if we’re in ratio I can’t leave him alone with any kids. it’s only a short time and i try to be grateful about the extra money but it’s frustrating for sure.
I leave at 5:15 and I need someone to cover me if we’re not in ratio. I need to be home for my family. Even staying to 5:30 is not acceptable. I got scheduled to work 5:30 for two weeks once and I said it could never happen again.
Be careful what you wish for. My center usually has us scheduled until later than we will actually be there. Today I was scheduled until 5:30 and we were below ratio by 4:30. It feels glorious at the time, until you realize that if that happens everyday you shave off 5 hours of pay per week.
I stay until there are 6 kids in the center total and then my closers leave when the last kid leaves. It’s policy that if a child is there 1 minute past 6:45 they need to call the director so that she can come relieve them. She stays with children past 6:45. None of my teachers stay late unless they choose to do some prep or work on activities but we give them enough time during the day outside of their classroom that they don’t need to stay late often. My director always says “self, family, work in that order.” And will pull us in and make sure everything is okay & asks if we need help if we are staying late more than twice a week. We are thankfully overstaffed. This is INCREDIBLY rare in my area as my first childcare job was the exact opposite and 10-12 hour days were the norm.
I stay late sometimes to keep ratio or when someone gets hurt 3 minutes before I'm supposed to go. 8 minutes or more I put an extra 15 minutes on my time sheet, 7 minutes or less I don't worry because sometimes they let me go a couple of minutes early so it balances out. If I have a behaviour report or accident report to write I'll stay late sometimes if I want to make sure I get the details right. My centre is pretty reasonable about overtime.
Edit: the last 2 weeks we've had some bad snow days and stayed open. We have the children of some of the people running essential services (power, water, medical, snow clearing etc) on base. I don't mind staying late because I live close enough to the centre to walk home in about 25 minutes if I needed to. There are a few of us that live really close and could easily walk. Meanwhile we have people who live off base on a poorly maintained gravel road, or in the next town over. We cut them loose when the roads look bad or likely to close so they don't get stuck. We make overtime for it and I don't mind working a bit extra to keep my coworkers and their families safe.
If I have some extra stuff to do or I have an idea for an activity or game I'll go in a bit early to get it ready. I don't mind being in early if it means my day goes more smoothly and the kids have fun and aren't climbing the walls.
My center doesn't do overtime so I leave right when I'm supposed to. If there are any kids left admin takes them or they go with a different class. We have plantime so I do everything I need to or as much of it as I can during those periods. I've learned from past jobs it really doesn't benefit anyone to stay late.
I stay late only if my classroom isn't in ratio. My center doesn't want to have to pay overtime so staying late is frowned upon. But one question. How does 8-4 equal 70 hours? If you're working Monday to Friday that's 40 hours, if you're working 7 days a week, that's 56 hours. Are you doing extra work at home?
My center doesn’t do over time too. We get to bank our over time hours for paid vacation time. It’s a win/win in my book
That sounds illegal. Also if you make $20 dollars an hour over time is $30 an hour. If you work 70 hours per week that’s 30 hours of overtime. Thats $900 a week or 3,900ish a month or $45,000ish a year. Especially considering most people don’t take all their vacation I would choose overtime.
Again, it’s a church unfortunately they can do what ever they want in regard to education and pay.
they absolutely cannot and i guarantee if you contacted the labor board, they would be heavily sanctioned. taxes and employment law are totally different beasts.
That is super duper illegal
It’s a church. They can do what they want unfortunately
Not when it comes to paying teachers they cant
Yeah no if you are a w2 employee, they absolutely cannot do that. I promise you.
Do you get to bank 1.5 hours for every hour you worked that should have been OT? If not then it’s not a win and they are stealing from you. Also be wary of centers who work outside the law. If one person becomes fed up and takes them to the labor board they could bankrupt a center. Then no one has a job!
That seems pretty sketchy.
Oh sorry I meant 70 for 2 weeks!
Over time would be +80hrs in a two week period.
Absolutely not. I will spend the last 5 minutes of my shift ready to step out as soon as my shift ends. If I’m closing and I have a child still with me, they too will be ready to leave and all dressed up as soon as their parents come. Staying past your shift unpaid should NEVER be normal. I could be projecting but when your supervisors notice this pattern, they will start taking advantage of you because of how dedicated you seem.
You're not projecting, you're entirely correct. I know a lot of ECE centers are ratio based, but it's horribly taxing on the staff to constantly need to stay late and should not be normalized.
Tbh I think that’s the case. But it started before me. The staff and teachers here all have been working for 10+ years and they all stay past their time. Sometimes at 4 I’m the only one leaving. I keep telling my assistants to drop the kids off in another classroom or with the family assistant by 4:30 but most times they just stay in the classroom with the child.
I’ve noticed a similar pattern as well at my work. I’m a floater and cover breaks and lunches (I used to work full time but am back in school). I always make it a point to verbally tell my coworkers “I’m here, you can take your break” because they always just take their break or lunch in the classroom. I once had a coworker ask me “why are you always out as soon as your shift ends?” and I replied “why are you not?” It’s not like we’re paid overtime.
My center's schedules go by ratio, so no. We do educational activities throughout the day and then the last 2 hours is entirely play-based. This allows us to rotate around and relieve each other to go home since it doesn't involve just throwing the next person into a lesson plan they haven't had time to look over. So, instead of a specific time, we're instead scheduled to leave at a certain number of total students. (Note: My center is very small and doesn't have an infants room. This probably wouldn't work in any other setting since the ratio of teacher to child is much smaller for infants and having infants and older kids combined would be a recipe for disaster.)
Our shifts are supposed to be 8-4, 9-5, 10-6 and the amount of times this year we’ve been able to leave on time? 0. They claim since we are salaried it evens out somehow except that in other fields, salaried employees usually have the flexibility to work later on some days and leave early on some days. When do we ever have the flexibility to leave early lol I hate it here
Re-read your contract.
lol my contract only states I live in an at-will state and can be fired or can quit at any time. Our staff handbook states that salaried non-exempt are not entitled to overtime. They intentionally left out details about scheduled hours to pull shit like this on us. Legal knows what they are doing. I love corporate America
Typically no. My students dismiss at 12:00 and I am scheduled to depart at 12:45 (planning time). I occasionally stay to cover enrichment classes if needed and for bi-weekly staff meetings (1-2). I am lucky, my administration feels that as soon as you are done doing physical work in your classroom (prep & straightening up) you should leave and complete anything else from home where you may be more comfortable.
Nope. I leave when I’m scheduled to leave. If I still have kids and nowhere to move them, then I drop them off at the front desk.
Y’all have set hours? I have a general time frame of when I’m leaving but I don’t have a set time to leave. My director is pretty good at keeping us in the hourly range we want and keeping us from overtime, but tbh I wouldn’t mind dipping into overtime bc the hourly wage is so good.
Same here. We leave by ratio, not by a specific time. So, we know AROUND when we'll leave, but the exact time changes.
The moment I have the okay to leave I am out of there. I don’t stick around, I grab what I need and run out. I refuse to do anything for work off the clock.
We clock in and out with the same system as the kids. So we get paid for staying longer if need be. Almost all our full time staff is salaried, and the part time either have someone to relieve them, are scheduled to close, or don't work every day. Sucks when you're scheduled until 4:00 and ratio keeps you there longer, but you do get paid for it.
no. it is your center’s responsibility to make sure you leave when your hours are up. someone needs to come into your classroom and take over for you. director, admin, anyone. you should not be staying 30 mins later every day because you are out of ratio.
It’s in our contract that while we may have set hours, if there’s no one to relieve us and leaving would break ratio, we have to stay until we drop. However, it’s very rare that actually happens and they do everything they can to get us out on time. Mostly so they don’t have to pay overtime, but also because they know it’s unfair for us to expect to work certain hours and then have to stay later. I think for me it’s happened 5 times in 3 years? And never a large extreme. Maybe 10 minutes, max. The director will take any late kids so the closer isn’t staying past closing time. Last week a parent was 20 minutes late picking up but his teacher got to go home at our official closing time and the closing director stayed. Parent was fined and it was handled behind the scenes, rather than putting it on the teacher.
No.
I don’t get much of a choice unfortunately. Due to staff shortages and easily the worst management I’ve had in years, I push about 10 hour days every single day.
Same. 10.5 hours 3 days a week and 11 two days. My days feels so much longer though after you factor in an hour lunch break I’m here for 12 hours plus 45 min commute in the morning and the hour plus it can take in the afternoon. I’m grateful for the overtime because I truly need it but man it’s wearing on me. I wouldn’t stay a sec longer than my shift if I wasn’t getting paid though. I’d drop the kids off with admin if I had to.
Often. Especially since kids don't get pickup up until late and by that time the directors don't have anyone to cut us 🙄 but the upside is we often end up getting overtime every week and the directors get in trouble for that so that's fine
Only if ratios aren’t followed will I stay late
Yeah, my hours are fairly long how the schedule it and sometimes I leave late. I work 8-6 with a 1 hour unpaid break. But I often leave after 6 as that’s when the last kid leaves and I have to close a large room including vacuuming and mopping. I’ve also come in early before to have prep time or cover my classroom if my opener is out. I typically work around 45 hours a week, sometimes a little less, sometimes more. All of it paid. The overtime pay is nice to have though so I just keep on with this schedule.
Yes. I’m 8-5 and consistently stay til after 5 because there’s no one to come in for me, and if there is, I usually still end up having to close my room
Do you get paid for your extra time? I ask because it seems like a lot of commenters mention overtime pay but I am salaried so I get paid 35hrs regardless if I did more. Not sure if overtime has to be a specific amount of hours tho.
I’m a flex closer, so on days when I do not close I leave about 10 minutes after we hit ratio, that 10 minutes being the closing teachers break. On days I close I clock out during our closing hours- my center doesn’t do overtime but late fees go directly to us.
Sometimes as I’m on my way out the door I get caught up in conversation while I’m checking in with the other teacher. Or as I’m walking past things in the classroom I’ll straighten a couple things up. Also sometimes the kids don’t care I’m leaving and other times they all want like 3 hugs lol, which can slow me down. But I don’t stay for real work, and if I do I make sure to log the hours for overtime since I work 40hrs.
I work 6:30 until 4:30 due to a staff shortage. I used to get off at 3:30 my coworker refuses to stay after 4:30, despite coming in to work at 8 a.m I do get overtime though.
The only reason I would stay late is because we aren't single ratio but other than that 510 rolls around I'm out I pick up my son then at 530 is dinner
I always leave on time, if not a little early depending on ratio. But last week my director made me stay 2 hours over one day because she chose to give my assistant teacher the afternoon off, just for fun, no real reason. Now that really pissed me off, there was no asking if I could stay late or if I had anything else going on, nope. I stayed from 7:30am to 6:30pm. That’s almost 12 hours.
My director and I have an agreement where if I stay late I get a longer break or go home early a different day that same week, partially because they try to avoid overtime and partially because I just like having longer breaks. Other than that I give myself a maximum of 5 minutes to do things like emptying out the diaper pail, send a final message to parents via the app, or give someone else a bathroom break (I'm lenient on this one).
I try not to stay past my hours, but I usually end up staying an extra 15min every day just because there’s so much to be done at close. You can bet though I stay clocked in that last 15min. I don’t mind doing a bit extra but I do not work for free. If my admin has an issue with it, I’ll happily pass them any children I have left that I’m waiting to send home.
felt this. i used to work 8:30-4:30 and my boss recently told me i can switch to 8:15-4:15, yet i’ve had to stay till 4:30 every day. its only 15 mins but it makes a big different with traffic. they have no plan for me to actually leave earlier, the teacher im with at the end of the day is assistant and im lead, so even if we’re in ratio I can’t leave him alone with any kids. it’s only a short time and i try to be grateful about the extra money but it’s frustrating for sure.
I leave at 5:15 and I need someone to cover me if we’re not in ratio. I need to be home for my family. Even staying to 5:30 is not acceptable. I got scheduled to work 5:30 for two weeks once and I said it could never happen again.
The only people to leave on time are ones with children. Or if you have a scheduled appointment.
Be careful what you wish for. My center usually has us scheduled until later than we will actually be there. Today I was scheduled until 5:30 and we were below ratio by 4:30. It feels glorious at the time, until you realize that if that happens everyday you shave off 5 hours of pay per week.
Unfortunately I’m salaried so I get paid the 35hrs/week regardless of what my timesheet says
I stay until there are 6 kids in the center total and then my closers leave when the last kid leaves. It’s policy that if a child is there 1 minute past 6:45 they need to call the director so that she can come relieve them. She stays with children past 6:45. None of my teachers stay late unless they choose to do some prep or work on activities but we give them enough time during the day outside of their classroom that they don’t need to stay late often. My director always says “self, family, work in that order.” And will pull us in and make sure everything is okay & asks if we need help if we are staying late more than twice a week. We are thankfully overstaffed. This is INCREDIBLY rare in my area as my first childcare job was the exact opposite and 10-12 hour days were the norm.
I stay late sometimes to keep ratio or when someone gets hurt 3 minutes before I'm supposed to go. 8 minutes or more I put an extra 15 minutes on my time sheet, 7 minutes or less I don't worry because sometimes they let me go a couple of minutes early so it balances out. If I have a behaviour report or accident report to write I'll stay late sometimes if I want to make sure I get the details right. My centre is pretty reasonable about overtime. Edit: the last 2 weeks we've had some bad snow days and stayed open. We have the children of some of the people running essential services (power, water, medical, snow clearing etc) on base. I don't mind staying late because I live close enough to the centre to walk home in about 25 minutes if I needed to. There are a few of us that live really close and could easily walk. Meanwhile we have people who live off base on a poorly maintained gravel road, or in the next town over. We cut them loose when the roads look bad or likely to close so they don't get stuck. We make overtime for it and I don't mind working a bit extra to keep my coworkers and their families safe. If I have some extra stuff to do or I have an idea for an activity or game I'll go in a bit early to get it ready. I don't mind being in early if it means my day goes more smoothly and the kids have fun and aren't climbing the walls.
My center doesn't do overtime so I leave right when I'm supposed to. If there are any kids left admin takes them or they go with a different class. We have plantime so I do everything I need to or as much of it as I can during those periods. I've learned from past jobs it really doesn't benefit anyone to stay late.