Very very good, cbg. You're becoming really great at this! As if you ever wanted to be
OP, not only is it a very good thing career wise to accept a temporary position (think of the contacts you may make, references you may get, positive information about positions in the district, all that jazz) it is a VERY good thing to do related to your unemployment benefits.
When you signed up for unemployment benefits, they gave you a monetary determination of your claim, how much you can draw, and for how many weeks, and a gross amount in the claim. If you stop drawing and work for a few weeks while you still have money in the claim, you do not lose this money, the weeks do not have to be consecutive. They'll be hooked on after you complete the short term job (if you are not fired, don't quit, don't become disabled while it is going on)
In fact, if you look at your claim information you were given, there will be a BYE (benefit year ending) date. This means that this claim is good from the date that you filed it until this BYE passes. It's somewhere in the next six or eight months, a Saturday date that is one year from the date you originally filed the claim.
If you accept the substitute position, you will not file for unemployment insurance during those weeks in which you worked and are paid or will be paid at some point, even if it's much later.
Regardless of when you were paid, you stop filing the first full week you work and then look back and you have worked all the previous week, got it. This means it doesn't matter WHEN they pay you for the work, you did the work and will be paid for it = you don't file for unemployment that week.
When the work is over, you'll "re-open your claim." If for some reason your benefit year had passed while you were working, (you can look at the paperwork you have received to see if that is going to happen)all that would change is that you'd have to file a new claim for benefits before you could start drawing again.
And guess what? Even if you have plenty of wage quarters to set up that new claim, if you have had no other covered re-earnings during that whole year, if you haven't worked anywhere else and been laid off for a qualifying reason, then you cannot begin drawing the new claim. When you do run out of unemployment insurance due to the Benefit Year Ending date passing, they'll take another claim, but if you don't have those magic "reearnings", have not worked anywhere at all during the year, you cannot begin drawing again on a regular claim.
So working this few weeks as a sub, any time you can get it working as a sub will help you in the long run. When your new claim is figured, at the end of your benefit year, you'll not only have more wages in the quarters they are using to figure the new claim, you'll have reearnings in place that will enable you to begin drawing the claim where you couldn't otherwise.
Take the job. work at it until it is over, then refile your claim. Believe me, it's much for the best. If you were to refuse the job, out of fear you might screw up your benefits, you'd have to report it that week to the system and you'd be cut off if you were honest (it's not a good reason to refuse a job) and you'd be committing fraud and very well might be caught and penalized if you didn't.
School systems
hate to pay unemployment benefits. If you refuse to come back and work the short term job, you'd better report it yourself, because you can be sure that the school system will report that they offered you the job and you refused it. They almost ALWAYS do that, because people drawing unemployment benefits costs them money in the long run. So be perfectly honest, whatever you decide.
