School Board again comes up on the wrong side of a legal issue | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The Beaufort County Board of Education came up on the wrong side of another legal issue this week. As we have previously reported, our school board recently voted to contest the new law that requires that employees salary and disciplinary history be made available. Included in the action was a request (which had already been made) by the School Boards' Association that the Attorney General issue an opinion on the law.

    Yesterday (11-8-10), Chief Deputy Attorney General Grayson Kelley issue the opinion. He said, inter alia that the following information is a matter of public record:

    1. The date and amount of each increase or decrease in the employee's salary with the employer. Prior to     the Act, the public had access to only the employee's current salary and the date and amount of the most     recent increase or decrease in a public employee's salary.

    2. The date and type of each promotion, demotion, transfer, suspension, separation, or other change in     position classification. Prior to the Act, the public had access to only the date of the most recent promotion,     demotion, transfer, suspension, separation, or other change in position classification.

    3. A general description of the reasons for each promotion that a public employee received. Prior to the Act,     the public did not have access to the reasons for a public employee's promotion.

    4. Date and type of each dismissal, suspension, or demotion for disciplinary reasons taken against the
     employee and, if the disciplinary action was a dismissal, a copy of the written notice of the final decision of     the public employer setting forth the specific acts or omissions that are the basis of the dismissal. Prior to     the Act, the public did not have access to either the type of disciplinary dismissal, suspension or demotion     or a copy of the final decision setting forth the specific basis for a disciplinary dismissal. Thus, presumably     the recourse the School Boards' Association now has is to file a law suit against the law.

    As reviewed in our earlier article linked above, one of the underlying reasons for the new law was that the law had been being interpreted to exclude information about adverse personnel actions that had been taken against an employee. For example, a teacher in New Hanover County Schools was disciplined for having inappropriate sexual contact with a student. She resigned and was hired in Pitt County Schools. New Hanover did not disclose the teacher previous disciplinary record to Pitt County Schools. And sure enough, the teacher then got into similar trouble with a student in Pitt County. Had the record been released to Pitt County it is highly unlikely the teacher would have been hired and another student subjected to abuse by that teacher.

    Click here to read the AG opinion.

    Commentary

    Hopefully our School Board will rethink its previous action contesting this law and go ahead and comply with it. The law is needed. And our School Board should do whatever it can to protect our students and other employees from teachers who have bad records. That just makes common sense to us and we are mystified as to why our school system cannot see that, on balance, it is better to know an employee's true history than it is to have regrets later.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.