BILL ANALYSIS

Senate Research Center	H.B. 5606
89R24893 ANG-D	By: Wilson (Creighton)
	Education K-16
	5/26/2025
	Engrossed

AUTHOR'S / SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT

Texas educators dedicate years, often decades, of service to their communities. As they retire, many still have unused sick leave on the books. In districts without local policy, those earned days simply expire. H.B. 5606 ensures local school districts have a fallback option: If no local policy exists, retiring teachers' unused sick leave days may be deposited into a shared leave pool to support current teachers still in the profession. This approach keeps control at the local level and ensures that a resource that districts already track does not go to waste. 

H.B. 5606 amends current law relating to a sick leave pool for public school employees.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

This bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, institution, or agency.

SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS

SECTION 1. Amends Subchapter A, Chapter 22, Education Code, by adding Section 22.0031, as follows:

Sec. 22.0031. SICK LEAVE POOL. (a) Requires the board of trustees of a school district or governing body of an open-enrollment charter school, except as provided by Subsection (b), to establish a program under which a retiring employee's accrued sick leave is contributed to a sick leave pool on the retirement of the retiring employee and sick leave contributed to the sick leave pool may be used by a district or school employee who has exhausted the employee's sick leave, subject to any district or school policy regarding the use of sick leave.

(b) Provides that the board of trustees of a school district or the governing body of an open-enrollment charter school that adopted a policy related to a retiring employee's accrued sick leave before September 1, 2025, is not required to establish a program in accordance with Subsection (a) if establishing the program would conflict with that policy.

SECTION 2. Amends Section 22.003(c-1), Education Code, to require that any informational handbook a school district provides to employees in an electronic or paper form or makes available by posting on the district website include information on the sick leave pool created under Section 22.0031 and notification of an employee's rights under Subsection (b) (relating to the rights of an employee of a school district who is physically assaulted during the performance of the employee's regular duties) in the relevant section of the handbook.�

SECTION 3. Effective date: September 1, 2025.