Request By:
State Senator David Boswell
Opinion
Opinion By: Albert B. Chandler III, Attorney General; Ross T. Carter, Assistant Attorney General
Opinion of the Attorney General
KRS 161.155(8) says:
After July 1, 1982, a district board of education may compensate, at the time of retirement, an employee or a teacher for each unused sick leave day. The rate of compensation for each unused sick leave day shall be based on a percentage of the daily salary rate calculated from the employee's or teacher's last annual salary, not to exceed thirty percent (30%). Payment for unused sick leave days shall be incorporated into the annual salary of the final year of service; provided that the member makes the regular retirement contribution for members on the sick leave payment. The accumulation of these days includes unused sick leave days held by the employee or teacher at the time of implementation of the program.We have been asked whether this subsection allows school districts to impose conditions on the granting of this benefit. Specific examples are a school district that grants the benefit only to teachers employed in the district for at least eight years, and a school district that pays teachers at a lower rate for sick leave earned outside the district.
We find nothing in the statute to support the imposition of these conditions. The expression "each unused sick leave day" cannot be construed to mean anything other than the total number of sick leave days accumulated. We have examined various dictionaries and other authorities and find them unanimous in defining the word each to signify all in most contexts. In Adams Express Company v City of Lexington, 83 Ky 657, 660 (1886), the court said that each "denotes every one of the two or more comprising the whole." In Smith v Hall, 217 Ky 615, 290 SW 480, 482 (1927), the court said that each "means every individual of two or more, especially when applied to a definite number." In Black's Law Dictionary p 155 (West, 6th ed 1990) each is described as "a distributive adjective pronoun, which denotes or refers to every one of the persons or things mentioned; every one of two or more persons or things, composing the whole, separately considered. . . . 'Each' is synonymous with 'all' and agrees in inclusiveness . . . ." We could go on. All the authorities point to the conclusion that "each unused sick leave day" means all unused sick leave days, not some of them. A school district has no authority to compensate employees for some but not all unused sick leave days.
This conclusion is supported by the last sentence of the subsection in question, which says, "The accumulation of these days includes unused sick leave days held by the employee or teacher at the time of implementation of the program." This sentence prohibits school districts from excluding sick leave days accumulated before the district initiates the program to pay for unused sick leave days. It is consistent with our interpretation, which prohibits other sorts of reductions in the number of sick leave days for which an employee may be compensated.
We reach the same conclusion regarding the payment of unused sick leave at different rates depending on where the sick leave was earned. The statute contemplates one rate applied to all unused sick leave days; it does not authorize different rates for different days. To apply different rates would amount to a partial exclusion: paying certain days at one-half the rate of other days, for example, is the same as excluding one-half of those days.