Lindsey Vettorel stayed out of the classroom for much of this past school year because she feared the stress of teaching would set back her recovery from a serious medical episode.
Now, she says another source of stress has had the same effect — being fired from her teaching job in Lexington 1 after the school district says she used up her medical leave.
“I already have a signed contract for next year, and they still terminated me,” Vettorel said.
It all started last year, when Vettorel, 39, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. At that time, “I only had to take off a couple days here and there,” she said. “I needed two weeks off for surgery on my thyroid, but I tried to do that during the summer.”
Then, the day after Thanksgiving, Vettorel suffered a stroke. This time, her doctor recommended she take at least six months off from teaching English at Forts Pond Elementary School to focus on her recovery.
“I figured I could go back next school year,” she said.
Vettorel took unpaid leave during her recovery under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which protects a worker’s right for up to 12 weeks of leave from work during a medical emergency. Even then, Vettorel said it took months for her to receive the paperwork she needed for her insurance from the district.
When she was nearing the end of her unpaid leave time, Vettorel said she received a call from human resources in April that essentially gave her the option of going back to work or leaving her job. She said she didn’t feel she could come back this school year.
“Then they said I either needed to resign or be terminated,” she said. “And they said if I was terminated I could never get a job in the district again.”
Lexington 1 Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait wrote a letter to Vettorel on May 21 advising her that district policy says a teacher cannot exceed 91 days of absence without authorization and saying the district had not received a request for such authorization. Vettorel’s termination was “based on your inability to report to work to perform the essential functions of your position without any available leave or an articulable plan for your return,” Postlewait wrote.
An earlier letter from Devona Price, the district’s chief human resources officer, noted that Vettorel had been out of work since Nov. 27, 2023, and her leave had been exhausted two months earlier than the date of the letter. The district had “explained that the request for special authorization must include an articulable plan for your return to work or an explanation of any delay in treatment from your treating physician,” Price wrote. “As of today’s date, no additional request or certification form has been received on your behalf and the District must take steps to move forward in the best interest of its students and operations.”
Lexington 1 declined to discuss the specifics of Vettorel’s case with The State because it is a “private matter” but did point to the district’s leave policy.
“Our district supports its employees as best we can,” said district spokesperson Libby Roof. “However there are times, such as when an employee may be out of work for an indefinite and extended period of time, when the district must make difficult decisions to uphold our responsibilities to our students and community.”
Roof said Vettorel is still technically employed since the school bard has not yet voted on her employment status.
Vettorel told The State she had communicated a planned return date and explained her medical situation, and she had signed a teaching contract for the 2024-25 school year intending to return to the classroom. She shared a message exchange she had with a human resources officer that stated her neurologist had ruled her out of returning for the rest of the school year.
In South Carolina, any employee with a long-term medical issue is primarily dependent on the FMLA, said labor attorney Reginald Belcher with the Turner Padget law firm. Once a worker runs out of the leave mandated by that law, the best alternative is an extended leave from work as a “reasonable accommodation” under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Belcher said. But that law doesn’t mandate an amount of leave, which can leave it up to employers to decide how long they can afford to keep a position open.
“You’re not entitled to indefinite unpaid leave,” Belcher said. “That leaves employers with some guess work. … For larger employers, those with more than 100 employees in an area, they have more moving pieces they can move around, and move someone in and keep that job open, whereas smaller employers don’t have that option.
“There aren’t many employers who have the wherewithal to hold a job open for several months,” he said. “I’ve seen it before, it’s possible, but it’s a big problem.”
South Carolina schools are in the midst of a severe and worsening teacher shortage. At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, 1,613 vacancies were reported in public schools across the state, a 9% increase over the year before, The State has previously reported. By February, another 924 teachers had left their jobs, and a total of 1,315 teaching vacancies remained.
Some Midlands schools have been relying on online programs and long-term substitute teachers in the absence of certified teachers, to the consternation of many students and parents.
At the same time, South Carolina teachers have been pushing for a new state law to allow them more protection and flexibility in their employment contracts. But lawmakers failed to pass that law, despite teachers’ wishes.
What will she do next?
Vettorel said she was surprised by how the district treated her illness, especially since she said she was following the advice of her doctor.
“The stress of this has caused me issues,” she said. “I’ve never even been reprimanded. I love my job. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was a little kid. … My mom, my grandma, my great-grandma were all teachers. I never anticipated this would happen. It seems like the decent thing as a human would be to not kick me when I’m down.”
Vettorel spent 10 years working for the Lexington 1 school district, when she started as a volleyball coach at White Knoll High School. The family moved from Pittsburgh with their four children when Vettorel’s husband got a job as a civilian firefighter at Fort Eisenhower in Augusta.
This wasn’t the first time Vettorel said she felt her health concerns had been neglected. She said she had a “traumatic delivery” when her youngest daughter was born in 2016 but was denied the time off for a consultation with her doctor because, she said she was told, “you’ve missed too much school already.” She ended up needing surgery because of complications, she said.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Vettorel said she requested to be able to work from home. She was already teaching her class remotely, but the district required teachers to come into school to do the courses, something that made Vettorel uncomfortable because of her lupus. She said she was docked pay when she taught her students at home, only for working from home to become mandatory after she went back to the classroom.
She said she suspects the district is looking to reduce positions, and her illness came at a “convenient” time. “Obviously, I can’t say for sure,” she said. “But that has been the discussion at different schools.”
Now, Vettorel is unsure what she should do next.
“Our kids are happy here,” Vettorel said. “I want to go to school for my doctorate, but I need to find financing for student loans.”
At one point, she had hoped to follow her daughter to Beechwood Middle School in an English teaching job. Now, any new job may depend on how much her recovery has been set back.
“I have regressed,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be cleared for work. I know I would have been by now.
“Now I’m focused on keeping my kids protected, and I don’t want anybody else to go through what I’ve experienced.”
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