Flex Weeks: Taking Time off for Snow Days, Jury Duty, & Illness Without Losing Income

We recently had two major snow storms in our area. 14 inches were dumped the first time and 7 inches the second time! These storms were back to back, piling snow on snow and making my entire community a bit paranoid about driving. I could have done phone/Skype/FaceTime lessons, but because my babysitter couldn’t get here, that was not an option.

Someone recently asked how “snow days” factor into the yearly tuition plan that I use and encourage others to use. I thought it might be good to share how the yearly tuition makes it super easy to deal with snow days, jury duty, illness, and maternity leave.

The original article on flex weeks - how to take time off for snow days, jury duty, illness, and emergencies without losing income | composecreate.com

Here’s why the yearly tuition plan works:

  1. Figure out the number of weeks you want to teach in a year
  2. Multiply that by the price you want to charge for each lesson
  3. Divide that by the number of months you want to receive tuition. In my case it’s 12 months, but others may want to charge for the school year differently than summer. Those are all discussed in the yearly tuition plan blog post!

I would strongly recommend that teachers not teach more than 43 weeks per year. That’s actually high in my opinion! But when you factor 2 weeks off at Christmas, 1 week for spring break, 1 week for Thanksgiving, and 2 weeks off between both spring/summer and summer/fall, it only leaves one unassigned vacation week. I only teach 38 weeks the entire year which gives me six of these unassigned weeks.

Add Flex Weeks

The key to making unexpected time off work is to make a calendar for your school year with your scheduled time off written in. Then, allow for “flex weeks” which you don’t have scheduled on the calendar, but have accounted for in your billing. In my case, this means that I can hand out a schedule for my fall and spring calendar. But, I wait until the end of the spring semester to hand out the summer calendar. That way, I can account for weeks that I still have off and flex weeks that I have taken as vacation.

For example, I start my calendar in August and usually take off 2 weeks before the semester starts, 1 week for Labor Day week, 2 weeks for Christmas, 1 week for spring break, and 2 weeks between the spring and summer semester. (I do a group lesson the week of Thanksgiving that takes the place of their private lesson, so no time off is needed).

This means that I will have taken 8 weeks of scheduled time off by the end of the school year. I will have 6 weeks left as flex weeks for any of those unplanned weeks where I need to suddenly skip. I don’t tell my families when I am going to take those weeks off ahead of time, but rather just use them as I need to. If I don’t use many during the year and have leftover weeks, then I take all six weeks off at the end of the summer right before my new fiscal calendar begins.

Flex Weeks Work for Maternity Leave Too

Here’s a more extreme example. One year I knew that I was going to have a baby and wanted to take 8 weeks off of teaching. Since I have 14 weeks to play with, I decided to take 2 weeks at Christmas, 1 week between the spring and summer, 1 week between the summer and fall, and 8 weeks maternity leave. Of course, this did not give me many flex weeks, so if I had to take more than 2 weeks off for snow or illness, I would have had to make it up. But even with only 2 of these weeks, it worked for me that year.

(If I would have needed any more weeks off, I would have taken them off and then either made it up with a camp option in the summer, a group lesson, a rare makeup lesson, or taken the lesson price off of the last month’s tuition.)

But most years, I am not having babies! Lol. So, this is usually my studio calendar for a typical year:

  • Labor Day week – 1 week off
  • Thanksgiving week – 1 week off (or some years, I give group lessons at the beginning of the week and don’t take this week off)
  • Christmas – 2 weeks off
  • Spring break – 1 week off
  • End of spring semester – 2 weeks off
  • Between summer and fall semester – 2 weeks off

This leaves me with 5 flex weeks! This concept make it an easy decision to cancel lessons because of illness, jury duty, snow days, and illness. I will still get paid the same amount, because my yearly tuition plan has accounted for the fact that I am only teaching 38 lessons in the year and has divided the year into equal payments. Of course, if a festival or competition is coming, that makes the decision to take a flex week more difficult, but you get the idea.

In Summary The Process for Implementing Flex Weeks:

So in case this is confusing, let me say this succinctly:

  1. Determine your scheduled time off. [Make sure that you establish a yearly tuition plan so that you are charging for the total number of lessons you plan to teach in the year and you are collecting equal monthly payments.] 
  2. Add flex weeks (You may want only one. You may need three. It’s up to you!)
  3. Send out your calendar and include your scheduled time off, but not your flex weeks. [I recommend sending out your calendar only one semester at a time and then including “dates to remember” for your next semester.]
  4. Use and keep track of any of these weeks or days that you use during the year.
  5. Take off extra flex weeks or days at the end of your term. For example, if you are on a yearly tuition plan and have 1 flex week off left, then at the beginning of the summer you might send out this email:

    “The last week of lessons will be July 22nd unless I have an emergency and have to take off a week of teaching in which the last week will be July 29th.”

Read more about how to use flex weeks with the other two tuition plans (school year + summer or semesters + summer).

Do you have any of these weeks built into your teaching? Perhaps this is the year you can build in some of those weeks. If you are hesitant to institute a yearly price increase, then giving yourself an additional vacation/flex week and charging the same price is a way to give your families a break from price increases, but give yourself more flexibility and a pay raise.

You may also be interested in reading this follow-up article about flex weeks.

Read More

photo by @doug8888

11 thoughts on “Flex Weeks: Taking Time off for Snow Days, Jury Duty, & Illness Without Losing Income”

  1. It is so hard for me to use a yearly tuition scheme because there’s no way I can accept students only at one time of the year (the beginning of the school year – which for you is Aug/Sept I am guessing). This is because firstly all Indian schools have different start times – it could be January, it could be May, it could be July … ! Also, I get phone calls every day about people wanting to start lessons – if I put them on a waiting list and told them to wait several months till the beginning of my teaching year, I would surely lose these students as they would just call up another teacher.

    I tried quarterly/monthly payments – i.e. pay me the same amount every quarter/month, regardless of the number of lessons you receive – but found that there were a lot of complaints from parents that this was unfair. I am now using a pay-per-lesson scheme (shock, horror, I know!) – it’s far from ideal, especially because I have no idea how much I’m going to earn from month to month, but parents seem to think it’s more fair and it also means that I can take holidays (unpaid) whenever I need to. I do protect myself by not offering make-up lessons anymore (thanks to your article on it, and the headache that providing make-ups was constantly giving me), and don’t carry over a lesson to the next month unless I get 24 hours notice + a good reason.

    I hope one day I can use a yearly system like you do, but I think at the beginning when I am concentrating on building up my studio numbers this is what works best for me.

  2. Hi Leia,

    I can understand that it might be challenging to have a standard system for your calendar year if the schools do not have such a system.

    I would never tell a student to wait until the beginning of the next year to enter my studio, unless I didn’t need students. You might be interested in this article about how to pro-rate your year round tuition so that students can easily enter mid-year: https://composecreate.com/pro-rating-for-students-starting-mid-year/

    Maybe that would help! Everyone does indeed have to adjust any advice to their situation.

    Wendy

  3. Thank you for your response Wendy! I sat down and worked out how much I wanted to be paid and how it would work with this system. The only thing that I can’t figure out is how best to explain this to parents. I discussed this with another teacher here and she agrees that it’s so hard to get them to realise that the 30 minutes you spend with them is not the only time you spend working for them! Do you explain the way your system works in your policy? Do you tell them that you have factored in x weeks of holiday? Have you had any complaints from parents?

  4. Ah yes Leia, I can definitely help you out! Print out the “Where Does My Tuition Go?” brochure and give it to parents to hep them understand that you spend much more than just 30 minutes in helping their child be successful. If you have a website, you can link to this page. The link for the actual PDF brochure is at the bottom: https://composecreate.com/students/wendys-piano-studio/studio-info/where-does-my-tuition-go/

    When I need specific numbers, I often say that for every 30 minutes of time I spend with a student, I spend an additional 15 minutes of time preparing for that student. Of course, some weeks are less and some weeks are more (especially during recital and festival season). But, that reminds them that it’s not a per-hour type of investment.

  5. Hi Wendy: Also left this comment on your FB page, if you see it here, feel free to delete it there.

    Hi Wendy, I have implemented now your flex weeks program (thank you!!!) for 3rd year, 1st year used none so students had 8 weeks to select from for summer for their 6 lessons. Last year I took one, it was in June, so they could choose from 7.
    This year I need to use 2 weeks during school year. I teach 12-week quarters, Fall, Winter, Spring (12 lessons each) and Summer (6 lessons). They can pay by quarter or monthly, they are contracted for a total of 42 lessons a year. There are 5 school vacations that I don’t charge for or teach (Thanksgiving week, 2 weeks at Winter Holiday, 1 week Feb., 1 week in April). That leaves 5 weeks’ flex time. If I add 1 week to Winter Qu. that delays start of Spring Qu. by a week. If I then add 1 week to Spring Qu. that delay start of Summer Qu. by another week, which would end my Spring Qu. 2 weeks Iater, which goes to last week in June.
    The problem is then:
    They have only 6 out of 6 weeks to choose from as I’d take my last 2 of 5 flex weeks left in summer. I believe it isn’t really fair to parents to dictate which weeks they have to be (believe me, it’s been tough working up to offering lessons in summer, but I need the income). I don’t know which 2 weeks I’ll be taking in summer yet.
    Please help me. I love the flex weeks, but this is a tough one. I just can’t figure out what to do. Math is apparently not my strong suit. 🙁
    Hoping you or your readers here can give me advice, perhaps they’ve been through this.
    (Group lessons/piano camp are out, no space.)

  6. Hi Julie,

    I hope I am understanding your question.

    I would just offer the 6 weeks in the summer as the only times you are available for lessons. Then, if someone says they will be gone, then you could tell them you can offer them double some weeks if you have cancelations or other students who can’t come. If that still doesn’t work, then offer them the recorded lesson option where you have them send you their videos of their pieces and then comment on them in their regular lesson time (that they would be gone).

    I wouldn’t feel bad about only offering 6 out of 6 weeks to choose from. You may be used to giving them more flexibility, but it is not unusual to just say “these are the 6 weeks I am available to teach. Please let me know if you will be gone any of these weeks and if I have an opening in another week, I’m happy to offer that to you.” Many, many teachers do it this way, including me!

    Hope that helps!

  7. Hi Wendy,
    This is so very helpful, thank you. I suppose I just needed to hear it was ok to offer 6 out of 6! (You are right, I am used to offering them choices of weeks outside the 6.) And your sentence is just the one to say. I have done the double up in one week and haven’t gotten any complaints, the kids like the extra challenge. I hadn’t thought of the videos option at all, wonderful idea!
    This flex weeks in the policy has really made a huge difference in my work life, knowing they are there and I’m not losing money if I take time off is such a relief.
    Thanks for taking the time to answer my question!

  8. Hi Wendy,
    I definitely want to institute the flex weeks and I would like to do it on a semester basis and have figured out how to do this but I have one HUGE issue that I don’t know how to get around. I don’t know how to make the different days of the week come out to an even amount for each day. Especially Monday’s! There tends to be many holidays on Mondays so there aren’t as many lessons on a Monday say as on a Wednesday in a semester/year. I may have 12 weeks in a semester but that doesn’t mean that my Monday students are getting 12 lessons – how do you make everything even?

  9. Hi Maria,

    Great choice to institute flex weeks. You will love it! Here is a post with suggestions on what to do about making the Monday students even (in terms of lessons) with others: https://composecreate.com/how-do-you-handle-the-monday-holidays/

    Think of it like a puzzle. Perhaps take a Monday and Tuesday off on those holiday weeks and then take the Wed., Thurs., Friday on weeks like Thanksgiving or a week where you have birthdays in your family.

    Take a look at that post for lots of other ideas!

    Wendy

  10. Hi Wendy,

    I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this question and I overlooked it…but at any rate: What happens (tuition-wise) when a student decides to quit mid-year…(or even moves suddenly!)? How does this tuition program work for those special cases? Thanks!

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