More than 5 million employees could be affected by a new rule from the federal Department of Labor, and the wide-reaching rule could have detrimental effects on charter schools, preschools and tutoring programs.
The Department of Labor is in the final stages of issuing a new rule that would change federal regulations regarding overtime pay. The new regulation would make it so salaried workers earning $50,440 or less are entitled to overtime pay from their employer, up from today’s $23,660 a year.
This is bad news for organizations run by staff who are happy to work more hours to support the cause. “Think about summer programs or charter schools that run based on elbow grease and the passionate commitment of small staffs,” writes Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Or of local tutoring and mentoring programs that rely upon single twentysomethings who aren’t earning big bucks. Many of these employees do the work out of passion. They recognize that this kind of work doesn’t lend itself to conventional 9-to-5 days and can require long, irregular hours out in the community. The new rule could bring many such efforts to a grinding halt.”
Think of New Orleans schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I wrote about the recovery efforts of two charter schools to mark Katrina’s 10th anniversary. “This is how we were dealing with our grief,” Michelle Douglas, principal of Hynes Charter School, told me. “We just threw ourselves into this project. Whatever we had to do, we did.”
If administrative staff at those schools couldn’t work more than 40 hours a week, recovery efforts would have been dramatically slowed. When the next natural disaster hits, there are going to be passionate workers who want to throw themselves into their jobs. But legal implications will prevent them from doing so, even if they don’t want overtime pay, because their employer can’t afford the cost.
This isn’t necessarily to say the 40-hour rule is bad for the entire economy (although that case could be made). The problem is that it’s still a one-size-fits-most regulation even with the built-in exemptions. “One big problem with federal policy and regulation is that it’s not a delicate, surgical intervention,” Hess says. It’s impossible for the federal government to judge every situation individually and say something is alright in one case and wrong in another. There’s an important distinction to be made between the effects of this rule on large corporations versus charter schools or YMCA programs.
As Hess points out, it helps that teachers are classified as “professional” staff under the law and are exempt from the overtime requirement. But administrative and support staff still count. And small charter schools and tutoring programs aren’t likely to have budget space for lawyers, so they may end up simply keeping all affected employees from working more than 40 hours.
When people think about the effects of regulation, they often think about businesses, not schools. But in many ways, the two are related. Schools are employers trying to make the most of their budgets, just like businesses. The educational effect of regulations should be considered more often, especially on overtime pay.
“It may make it harder for all-hands-on-deck charter schools to thrive,” Hess writes. “These are not the considerations that will determine whether the law is adopted, but they’re well worth our attention — and a useful reminder that the impact of regulations is almost always broader than we might imagine.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
