• Governmental Compliance

    The Office of Human Resources is keen to address your compliance-related inquiries or needs. Below you will find a brief summary of the District’s compliance efforts with respect to major federal legislation. For all compliance-related inquiries, including filing a complaint, please email us at hr@wssd.org.

     

    Note that the Office of the Superintendent of Schools addresses all RIGHT-TO-KNOW REQUESTS; you can contact the District’s Right-to-Know Officer via the RighttoKnow@wssd.org email address. Additionally, if you seek LABOR-RELATED compliance information (e.g., U.S. Department of Labor, National/ Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board), you will need to contact hr@wssd.org.

     

    Civil Rights Act of 1964

    Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from engaging in employment discrimination against a protected class. To that end, the Federal Government has created the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (and, by extension, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission) to investigate complaints made by employees in which said employee’s civil rights were violated. All public institutions, by default, are equal-opportunity employers and the District provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

     

    Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972

    Title IX was passed to extend protections enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to education-related settings. As such, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding such as public schools. The law now covers matters not only related to athletic and extracurricular activities but also sexual harassment, sexual violence, and gender discrimination. Please note that, per District Policy 104, the Director of Human Resources is the District’s Title IX Coordinator but all Title IX complaints will be jointly reviewed with the Assistant Superintendent of Schools. 

    Under law, Title IX requires employers to publish grievance procedures related to Title IX-related complaints. As such, the District’s Title IX training manual, which outlines these policies and process, can be found here.

     

    Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)

    The ADA requires all employers, public and private, to provide reasonable accommodations to any employee who has a legally recognized/ applicable condition. The District makes every attempt to accommodate reasonable accommodations that, by law, do not impose an undue hardship on the employer. Employees who are interested in pursuing ADA accommodation(s) must complete the District’s ADA Request Form which can be found in the District HR Forms subsection of the Current Employees tab on the left-hand side.

     

    Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA)

    COBRA requires employers, public and private (size depending), to offer continuing healthcare coverage to (formerly) covered employees, their spouses, former spouses, and dependent children when group health coverage would otherwise be lost due to certain specific events (e.g., termination of employment). The District honors this requirement by offering former employees the opportunity to buy coverage at full price (without the employer subsidy) on any healthcare insurance plan(s) otherwise available in said employee’s classification group. 

     

    Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)

    Since many employers, public and private, offer healthcare as part of their employee benefits packages, HIPAA ensures employees have certain privacy protections concerning their medical conditions and healthcare benefits usage. By law, employers must keep two (2) distinct employee files – one for medical-related matters (known as Protected Health Information) and the other for employee employment and performance-related matters – so that information contained in the former does not influence employment-related decisions. While the Office makes both files available for inspection to the employee, school administrators (other than Office of Human Resources personnel) have access only to the non-medical file.  

     

    Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA)

    The ACA requires all employers, public and private (size depending), to provide health insurance coverage to all non-contractor employees (i.e., W2 employees) who work at least 30 hours per week. Moreover, the law requires all employers to provide a data resource known as Transparency in Coverage for public inspection.   

    Transparency in Coverage Links:

    [KHPE MRF URL]

    [QCC MRF URL]