Ai??Mark Rinehart is a hard-working math teacher in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Recently, his wife Hannah grew very ill with cancer and needed to have a quadruple amputation.

She has been hospitalized since July 2nd, and Mark wants to be at her side. He lacked the paid sick days needed to stay with her long, so his colleagues decided to step up and donate their unused sick days so he could be with Hannah.

But the school district has not allowed Mark to take the donated days.Ai??”We just can’t do it for one person. We have requests frequently to do the type of thing that they have requested. But we have 22,000 employees,” Gwinnett County Schools Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks told a local TV station.

“Government employees, the state of Georgia employees, the university system employees and several other districts and states have this policy,” said Donna Aker of the Gwinnett County Association of Educators of donated sick days.

Watch CBS Atlanta’s report about the Rineharts’ plight:

CBS Atlanta 46
 

The U.S. is not one ofAi??144 countriesAi??that guarantee sick days to workers, and it isn’t one of the scores that has generous family leave policy. In many other developed countries, Mark Rinehart would never have to choose between his job and being at his sick wife’s bedside.

Is there anyone you know who has ever been faced with a similar choice? Do you know anyone overseas who hasn’t had to thanks to more progressive leave policies?