In 2022, a federal law protecting breastfeeding women’s right to reasonable break time and private space to pump at work expanded to cover salaried workers, including teachers. It seemed like perfect timing for Katelyn Wolff, then a 1st grade teacher at St. Mary’s School in Bryantown, Md., who began planning for her January 2024 return from maternity leave months in advance.
But like so many other teachers, Wolff struggled to gain access to what she considered reasonable breaks to pump during the school day. Wolff said she and her former principal reached an impasse after the administrator denied her request for two daily 30-minute pump breaks spaced three to four hours apart, submitted two months before her return from maternity leave.
After some back-and-forth, Wolff said her principal offered her a demotion (which came with a significant pay cut) to teacher aide, a role that would supposedly allow her to leave the class at will during the day. Wolff took the offer until she could find another job and is pursuing legal action.
The Roman Catholic school declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Wolff’s struggle to find a suitable pumping arrangement at work is not unique for teachers. When Education Week queried its social media followers whether breastfeeding teachers at their schools are given time and resources to pump during the school day, 40 percent of the nearly 800 respondents answered “no.”
Given that countless classroom teachers struggle to find coverage for even a brief restroom break during the school day, the obstacles to accessing “reasonable” break times to pump milk may not come as a surprise.
Some blame schools’ failure to guarantee lactating teachers pumping breaks on staff shortages. But employee advocates suggest that, in some instances, administrators simply don’t think employees requesting the accommodations will push back.
Some administrators do make it a priority to accommodate their lactating employees. But, as anecdotes like Wolff’s and statistics show, many don’t.
Fear and resignation prevent some teachers from pushing to access legal rights
“There’s a sense of resignation and fear among educators,” Jessica Lee, a co-director of the Center for WorkLife Law, an advocacy and research organization affiliated with the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, told Education Week earlier this month. “They feel like: If I complain, I might get put in a grade that’s not my favorite or [be asked to] change schools. They’re worried about rocking the boat.”
Wolff can relate. “I think [the school administration] just really thought that I wasn’t going to fight it,” she said.
She did. In May, Wolff filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which handles discrimination claims.
St. Mary’s School shared with Education Week a recent letter from the principal to the school community, which included this excerpt: “We are deeply committed to supporting nursing mothers within our school community and providing reasonable accommodations while ensuring that we can continue to provide an exceptional education to students.”
The federal law guaranteeing lactating workers the time and space to pump does offer an exemption for employers with fewer than 50 employees, if they can demonstrate that complying with the law would cause them an undue hardship. Even so, Lee said the U.S. Department of Labor has rarely found a “true exemption” from the law.
Wolff, who has gone public with her story, said she has heard from a number of teachers, many of whom shared their decisions not to dispute less-than-ideal pumping scenarios in their own workplaces. Many of these women, she said, chose to stop breastfeeding because it seemed like the easiest solution at the time—despite the known health benefits of the practice to both mothers and children.
Committing to finding solutions for breastfeeding teachers
Administrators who commit to honoring the legal rights of breastfeeding teachers have found ways to accommodate them. Michael Kalb, a retired principal from San Jose, Calif., said supporting breastfeeding teachers requires an “all-hands-on-deck” approach.
“All staff would help cover the classroom, including me and my assistant principal, should the need arise. For several teachers, we kept this up until the baby no longer needed breast milk,” he told Education Week earlier this month.
Michael Martin, the principal at Buckeye Central High School in New Washington, Ohio and the 2024 Ohio Principal of the Year, prioritizes advanced scheduling to meet employees’ pumping needs. “I will usually plan a week out, so there is advance knowledge, which makes it easier to accommodate changing schedules,” Martin said.
Jill Inderstrodt, a health-services researcher with a focus on breastfeeding and maternal morbidity and an assistant professor at Indiana University’s School of Public Health, acknowledges the law protecting women’s rights to a private space and reasonable time to pump can be at odds with teachers’ schedules. She also advises advanced preparation to avoid schedule conflicts.
“With this new legislation, it will be important for schools to codify scheduling requirements of pumping mothers, so that moms don’t have to choose between breastfeeding and teaching,” Inderstrodt wrote in an opinion piece in Education Week in early 2023.
Sometimes, says Inderstrodt, there’s also an education component at play. “Teachers I have talked to reported difficult conversations with administrators in charge of class schedules who don’t understand the difference a couple hours makes in the physical comfort and supply maintenance of a pumping mom,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Wolff resigned from her former position and, in March, accepted a position as a literacy interventionist with the St. Mary’s County public schools in Leonardtown, Md.
“I’m so glad to have found my employer now and to receive the support I do now,” she said. “I don’t think my husband and I would have had or would be trying for another child had I not left, which is super sad to even think about.”
