Anthon-Oto Community School Dist. v. Public Employment Relations Bd., ANTHON-OTO
| Decision Date | 15 April 1987 |
| Docket Number | ANTHON-OTO,No. 85-1826,85-1826 |
| Citation | 404 N.W.2d 140 |
| Parties | 125 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3056, 39 Ed. Law Rep. 307 COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellant, v. PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS BOARD, Appellee, Anthon-Oto Education Association, Intervenor-Appellee, |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
James C. Hanks and Janet J. Brown of Klass, Whicher & Mishne, Sioux City, for appellant.
Amy J. Mills and Kathryn Nowack, Des Moines, for appellee.
Gerald L. Hammond of Sayre & Gribble, P.C., Des Moines, for intervenor-appellee.
Considered by HARRIS, P.J., and McGIVERIN, WOLLE, LAVORATO, and NEUMAN, JJ.
This appeal by the Anthon-Oto Community School District challenges a district court judicial review decision upholding an employee bargaining unit determination made by the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). The controversy centers on a petition filed by intervenor Anthon-Oto Education Association which sought to amend the existing bargaining unit of professional employees to include fourteen nonprofessionals. PERB found that the proposed bargaining unit met the criteria of Iowa Code section 20.13(2) (1983), a decision the school district characterizes as arbitrary and unsupported by substantial evidence. Upon review, the district court upheld PERB's decision. We affirm.
The undisputed facts give us a glimpse of life in a modern-day "one-room schoolhouse" in rural Iowa. The school district is composed of a total of 350 students, grades K-12, all housed in one attendance center in Anthon, Iowa. The superintendent, who hires all employees subject to school board approval, serves as the elementary principal. One other administrator, the high school principal, supervises all high school teachers.
Thirty-five teachers and counselors comprised the professional bargaining unit certified by PERB in 1980. On February 21, 1984, the education association petitioned to add fourteen nonprofessional employees to the bargaining unit, including three custodians, one secretary, three teachers' aides and seven bus drivers. This proposed consolidation of professional and nonprofessional employees was favored by the noncertified employees in an informal survey taken by the education association.
From the outset, the school district has opposed the idea of a combined professional/nonprofessional bargaining unit. It has mounted a dual challenge to the proposal claiming (1) that there is not substantial evidence in the record from which PERB could find that the proposed unit meets the criteria of Iowa Code section 20.13(2), and (2) that prior PERB decisions require similarity in employee job function, training and skills before professional and nonprofessional employees will be combined in a single bargaining unit.
I. We examine the school district's first challenge in light of Iowa Code chapter 20, the Public Employment Relations Act, which authorizes PERB to define the appropriate collective bargaining unit after conducting public hearing on the matter. See § 20.13(1). Section 20.13(2) gives PERB the following guidelines by which to fulfill its statutory mandate:
In defining the unit, the board shall take into consideration, along with other relevant factors, the principles of efficient administration of government, the existence of a community of interest among public employees, the history and extent of public employee organization, geographical location, and the recommendation of the parties involved.
Relying largely on the small size of the Anthon-Oto school district, PERB concluded that the "geographical location" and "efficient administration of government" factors were determinative, citing the greater cost-effectiveness in negotiating and administering one collective bargaining agreement for all forty-nine employees in the "wall-to-wall" unit. Moreover, it concluded that the professional and nonprofessional employees shared sufficiently similar conditions of employment to meet the "community of interest" standard, thereby enabling the two groups to engage cooperatively in meaningful and effective collective bargaining.
The school district argues that PERB's conclusions are unsupported by substantial evidence made before the agency when the record is viewed as a whole. Iowa Code § 17A.19(8)(f). We have said that evidence is substantial when a reasonable mind could accept it as adequate to reach a conclusion. Grant v. Fritz, 201 N.W.2d 188, 197 (Iowa 1972). Our review of the evidence is at law, not de novo, and we are mindful that the decision made by the agency based on that evidence is entitled to our deference if reasonable and not clearly erroneous. Iowa Association of School Boards v. PERB, 400 N.W.2d 571, 575 (Iowa 1987). The possibility of drawing two inconsistent conclusions from the same evidence does not prevent an agency's finding from being supported by substantial evidence. Reisner v. Bd. of Trustees of Fire Retirement Sys., 203 N.W.2d 812, 814 (Iowa 1973).
As we said in City of Davenport v. PERB, 264 N.W.2d 307, 312 (Iowa 1978), the wisdom of this carefully circumscribed standard of review is demonstrated by the kind of problem involved in the present case. Although the facts are undisputed, each party has gone to great lengths to marshal the evidence supporting its side of the argument. Appellant school district, assailing the conclusion that the professional and nonprofessional staff share a community of interest, stresses the dissimilarities between the groups regarding certification, job duties, method of compensation, hours of employment and fringe benefits. PERB and the education association, on the other hand, use the identical evidence to stress the commonality between the two groups including their common mission of furthering education, common hiring and supervision, similar work years and leave provisions, similarity in insurance benefits for all employees working thirty hours or more per week and the fact that all but the seven bus drivers work in the same building and have daily contact with each other. While conceding that the educational requirements of the two classes is markedly different, appellees correctly argue that factor alone cannot preclude a combined unit for section 20.13(4) specifically contemplates such a combination upon agreement of a majority of both groups. 1
Viewing the record as a whole, we find PERB's decision neither unreasonable nor erroneous. The agency clearly addressed all of the factors detailed in section 20.13(2) giving appropriate weight to those it deemed most relevant under the circumstances. Under the "efficient administration of government" test, it applied its consistently held rule...
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