Teachers to sue for tenure protections

by Jane Stancill, News and Observer, December 16, 2013.

In the second major education lawsuit in a week, six teachers and the N.C. Association of Educators are expected to file suit on Tuesday, challenging the end of tenure for public school teachers across North Carolina.

The legislature this year passed a budget that eliminates tenure in 2018. In the meantime, school districts will offer the top 25 percent of teachers four-year contracts and $500 to relinquish their status.

The state teachers group seeks to keep tenure for those teachers who have already earned it and to restore the possibility for those in the pipeline. Last week, the teachers association and public education supporters sued the state over the private school vouchers, calling them unconstitutional.

Since 1971, teachers who made it beyond a four-year probationary period earned “career status,” more commonly referred to as tenure. Though the designation did not equate to a lifetime job guarantee, it did come with certain job protections, including the right to a hearing in the event of dismissal.

One of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, Stephanie Wallace, 35, teaches English at East Forsyth High School in Kernersville. The legislature’s message to teachers is that they are expendable, she said.

Teaching is all she ever wanted to do since she was a N.C. Teaching Fellow at UNC Greensboro. After 14 years in her high school classroom, she said, she is paid the equivalent of a seven-year teacher’s salary in some places. To help pay medical bills for her son, who has a rare liver disease, Wallace teaches online for the state’s virtual public school and for DeVry University. She also works as a private tutor and spends $300-$500 each summer for classroom supplies and granola bars for her low-income students who sometimes get hungry in class.

“I did everything you told me I had to do,” Wallace said of the state’s requirements. “I have never had an unsatisfactory review. I have a master’s degree, I have AP certification, I am a Nationally Board Certified teacher. And you’re going to tell me all of a sudden that I don’t deserve career status any longer? I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. How is that fair? How is that legal?”

The lawsuit will claim that the state has broken a contract with teachers who took the job with the understanding that they could earn tenure, said Ann McColl, general counsel for the N.C. Association of Educators.

The idea under the old law is that poorly performing teachers would be weeded out during a four-year probationary period. The ones who made past that point earned career status. But they could still be fired for 15 reasons outlined in the law, including inadequate performance, immorality, neglect of duty and a reduction in a district’s teaching force.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican who led the effort to phase out tenure, has said tenure is an impediment to removing bad teachers from the classroom. He cited data from the state that showed only 17 teachers were dismissed in North Carolina in 2011-12.

Berger could not be reached for comment Monday. A spokeswoman for Berger said he would not comment until he had seen the lawsuit.

The N.C. School Boards Association supported eliminating tenure for future teachers, because of the cost and time involved in dismissing teachers. But the group wanted current teachers grandfathered in to the law.

Under the new law, all teachers would be placed on short-term contracts.

So, McColl said, teachers who have had career status for decades could be let go after a contract for no reason whatsoever and with no opportunity to challenge it.

“Because there’s no right to a hearing, there’s no way to know how they made a decision,” she said of administrators and school boards. “There’s no requirements for them making findings, so they decide to non-renew you, there’s no record. There’s nothing to look at. You have no right to be there when they make the decision, you have no right to provide information to support a renewal. You’re just done.”

Brian Link, 33, another plaintiff, started a second career as a teacher after practicing law in New York. He teaches world history, civics and economics at East Chapel Hill High, where he directs the school’s Social Justice Academy and has won several teaching awards.

When looking for a teaching job, Link chose North Carolina over Florida because of the state’s commitment to teachers, he said. This year would be the year he’s eligible for tenure.

The promise of job security helped him make the tradeoff for a lower paying job in the public sector, he said, but the rewrite of the law changes the equation.

“This is just another swipe at teachers and it’s going to make it very hard to keep highly qualified teachers in the classroom,” he said.

At East Forsyth, Wallace instructs students in the N.C. Teacher Cadet program who aspire to be teachers someday.

That’s one reason she joined the lawsuit, she said.

“I feel like I would be a hypocrite to continue to encourage people to come into this profession if I’m not willing to fight for it,” Wallace said. “Career status is huge. It’s a fight worth fighting.”y