Guilford School Board Challenges Teacher Tenure Law | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Sam A. Hieb, who is a contributor to the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

Lawsuit is separate from action filed by state school boards association

    GREENSBORO - The Guilford County Board of Education voted unanimously to take legal action so that it would not have to comply with state law eliminating tenure, or "career status," for K-12 public school teachers.

    The board passed a three and-a-half page resolution - read aloud by board chairman Alan Duncan - seeking a declaratory action on the board's behalf, "asking the court to declare the elimination of our existing, valid teacher contracts unconstitutional."

    The school system said the declaratory action will be filed in Guilford County Superior Court.

    The resolution also "requests that the North Carolina General Assembly rescind all provisions of the Appropriations Act of 2013 that eliminate tenure rights for teachers who have already earned and been awarded tenure."

    A number of other school boards have issued resolutions supporting a lawsuit challenging tenure filed by the N.C. School Boards Association. The Guilford board is the first to file its own legal action.

    While the resolution is mostly couched in legal jargon - both Duncan and Superintendent Mo Green are attorneys - the resolution also took a political shot at the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

    "The board believes this legislation represents yet another thinly veiled attack on Pre-K public education, public school employees, and the teaching profession, and more significantly, represents yet another attempt to undermine the commitment to serve all children in one excellent and unified system of public schools as called for in the Constitution of the State of North Carolina," the resolution reads.

    The issue of teacher tenure has been a hot one in Guilford County. It started when the board at its recent weekend retreat discussed simply disobeying the Appropriations Act, which eliminated career status in favor of bonuses for a select 25 percent of teachers.

    The board tabled the issue until Tuesday's meeting, when it could take a formal vote. The day before, Gov. Pat McCrory visited the Triad, returning to his alma mater, Jamestown's Ragsdale High School, to tout his new education plan, which focused on teacher pay but did not address tenure.

    As Carolina Journal reported, McCrory's plan will give early career teachers pay raises and, beginning July 1, teachers with up to seven years of service will collect double-digit percentage increases.

    The day of the board's vote, state Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, sent Green a letter stating he was "deeply troubled" by reports that the board was considering defying the law.

    "[I]t appears that at least some members of the School Board are grasping at straws for a legal argument to support their preference for the status quo on teacher pay," Berger wrote.

    Before the meeting, teachers and their advocates rallied the troops outside the GCS administration building, banging drums and waving signs.

    Several teachers spoke during the public comment period, while those in the audience waved their hands in lieu of applauding, per Duncan's instructions to keep the long meeting moving along.

    Board attorney Jill Wilson said a major issue was the retroactive nature of the legislation.

    "There are other states that have done this," Wilson said. "But no other state has done it retroactively."

    The board then went into closed session for more than an hour.

    When board member Darlene Garrett gave the "thumbs-up" sign as she walked through, a smattering of applause broke.

    Which was nothing compared to the applause that broke out after the resolution passed, after which the board stood and applauded the teachers.

    "The purpose of this resolution is to put the focus where it belongs - on the children the people who teach them," Duncan said.

    The board then stood and gave the teachers a round of applause.

    Declaratory judgments are considered a type of "preventive justice" by informing parties of their rights, in theory avoiding violations of contracts and costly lawsuits.

    After analyzing a dispute, a judge an opinion declaring the rights of each of the parties involved. According to the resolution, the board believes the Appropriations Act "includes provisions that unconstitutionally interfere with contracts issued by the Board by requiring teachers to forfeit a vested property right - tenure."

    The section of the Appropriations Act that drew the ire of teachers' associations and the Guilford board is the so-called "25 percent mandate," which requires superintendents to recommend four-year contracts to 25 percent of teachers with three consecutive years of experience who have met certain standards of performance.

    In return for the four-year contract - and the $500 pay increase that goes with it - teachers would forfeit their tenure, starting in 2018.

    In its resolution, the board says the language in the 25 percent mandate "is remarkably vague and subject to multiple, inconsistent interpretations, rendering its application by various boards of education necessarily arbitrary."