108 Sick Days, and a Payment That Took Two Years

The New York school worker had saved 108 sick days over 25 years. After she retired, the city owed her $8,703. It did not pay her on time.

That is the hard part of this story. The days were counted. The amount was set. Yet Maureen Pichl, a paraprofessional at the NYC school for the Deaf, waited through two years of missed payments before the money came.

Pichl retired in 2024 after 25 years with New York City schools. She said she had been told her unused sick time would be paid in three parts over three years, with the first check due within a year. That check did not arrive in 2025. The Department of Education later said it had reviewed the matter and confirmed that she had received the payment owed. The total reported was $8,703.80.

The difference between a promise and a payment can be small on paper. For the person waiting, it can stretch across months and then years. I find the delay more troubling because this was not a new claim about a missing work record. The days had been counted, and the amount was known.

What the record shows

The documented account has a clear end, but not a clear explanation for the delay. Pichl told ABC7 that she was given assurances the money was coming. When it still had not arrived, the station’s 7 On Your Side team contacted the Department of Education. The agency then began processing the unused time, and Pichl received two checks within two months. The department said the case was resolved.

That statement confirms the payment. It does not say why the checks had not been sent earlier, what step failed, or whether the same problem affected anyone else. Those points remain unknown in the public account.

This distinction matters. The worker’s account describes what she was told and how long she waited. The city’s statement says the money was paid and the matter resolved. Neither account, by itself, explains how a city payment could remain unsettled for so long.

There is a useful precedent, though it is not the same case. In December 2025, New York’s Appellate Division affirmed an order requiring the City of Schenectady to pay a former employee for unused sick leave under that city’s code. The court found that a local law had not removed the payout rule, and that the city could not change it by resolution alone.

The shared point is narrow: a public employer’s duty to pay accrued leave can depend on written rules, and a dispute can turn on whether those rules still apply. The cases differ in important ways. The Schenectady case went through court and concerned a city code. Pichl’s account concerns a New York City school worker whose payment was eventually made after a local news inquiry. The available reporting does not show that she sued, or that the same legal issue was at stake.

Still, the comparison gives the delay some weight. Public agencies do not escape payment obligations simply because the work is done or the employee has retired. But the Schenectady ruling does not explain what went wrong in Pichl’s case, and it cannot establish that the delay was part of a wider pattern.

The cost of waiting

A balance of sick days is easy to treat as a line in a record until a worker leaves and expects it to become money. Then each missed step has a human cost. Pichl described checking the mail after being told that a check should arrive. That detail stays with me because it is so ordinary. No legal language is needed to understand what it means to keep waiting for money someone says is due.

The account does not tell us what the $8,703.80 represented in Pichl’s household, or how the delay changed her plans. I will not fill in those gaps. The known facts are enough: she had worked for 25 years, banked 108 days, and did not receive the owed amount when expected.

There is also a limit to what this story can prove. One worker’s experience cannot show how often city payments are delayed, or whether other employees face the same problem. The city’s statement confirms that it paid her, but offers no public account of the cause. That leaves the key question open: was this a single processing failure, or a sign of a process that can leave workers waiting without a clear answer?

The precedent suggests two possible paths, not a forecast. A payment dispute can be settled once someone looks closely at the record, as this one was. In other cases, the rules may need to be tested in court, as they were in Schenectady. What comes next for other workers is unknown. But when promised pay rests on a count of days and a written process, the next test may be whether those records lead to a check without years of waiting.