Fong v. Jerome School Dist. No. 261

• Decision Date: 18 July 1979
• Docket Number: No. 12900,12900
• Citation: 101 Idaho 219,611 P.2d 1004
• Parties: Wyoma Sam FONG, Claimant-Appellant, v. JEROME SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 261, Employer, and Department of Employment, Defendants-Respondents.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 1004

611 P.2d 1004

101 Idaho 219

Wyoma Sam FONG, Claimant-Appellant, v. JEROME SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 261, Employer and Department of Employment, Defendants-Respondents.

No. 12900.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

July 18, 1979.

Louis Garbrecht, Twin Falls, for claimant-appellant.

R. LaVar Marsh, Donald L. Harris, Deputy Attys. Gen., Dept. of Employment, Boise, for defendant-respondent Dept. of Employment.

Frank M. Rettig, Jerome, for defendant-respondent Jerome School District No. 261.

SWANSTROM, Judge Pro Tem.

In the spring of 1977 appellant, Wyoma Sam Fong, was completing her second year of employment as a mathematics teacher at Jerome Junior High School. She had been a teacher for approximately ten years.

In April 1977, following complaints by some parents, the Superintendent of the Jerome School District learned that a few teachers employed by the school had given an unusually high percentage of failing grades. He learned from the State Department of Education that the statewide average failure rate was approximately 7%. Exclusive of the junior high school, the average failure rate in the district was 3%. He further learned that six to eight teachers of the junior high school, out of approximately one hundred eighteen teachers within the district, had failure rates of over 15%, with some as high as 30%. The failure rate in the classes taught by appellant was approximately 30%.

As a result of this situation the Superintendent informed all teachers at the school at the start of the fourth quarter of the school year that thereafter they would be expected to have not more than a 7% failure rate, and they would be required to justify any failure rate exceeding that percentage.

At about the same time the teachers were asked to submit their letters of intent indicating whether they desired a teaching contract for the coming year. After some soul searching, Mrs. Fong declined to renew her teaching contract at the school for the coming year because she felt she could not conform to the newly announced guidelines without violating her own ethical and professional standards. After completing the school term she applied for unemployment benefits, which were denied on the grounds that she voluntarily and without good cause quit her employment.

Appellant submitted a claim to the Department of Employment for unemployment compensation benefits, which were denied. The matter went to an appeals examiner who conducted a hearing and denied the claim. Claimant appealed to the Industrial Commission and another hearing was conducted by a Referee to take additional testimony. Following that hearing the Commission entered Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order again denying the benefits which claimant sought, and claimant appealed to this Court. This Court affirms the lower court's findings.

Finding IV of the Industrial Commission was in part as follows:

"The claimant left because she did not believe she could ethically uphold the guidelines set by the school superintendent. However, it was reasonable for the claimant's employer to expect her to abide by a generally accepted failure rate or to be prepared to justify a higher rate in her classes."

Conclusion III of the Commission was as follows:

"The claimant voluntarily left her employment because she was unable or unwilling to justify the 30% failure rate of her students or to modify her grading standard to conform to the guidelines established by the school district administrator. These are personal reasons unique to the claimant and do not constitute good cause for leaving employment for the purpose of unemployment insurance eligibility. . . ."

The applicable provisions of the Employment Security Law, as it existed at the time of this controversy, are as follows:

"72-1366. Personal eligibility conditions. --The personal eligibility conditions of a benefit claimant are that--

(e) His unemployment is not due to the fact that he left his employment voluntarily without good cause, or that he was discharged for misconduct in connection with his employment.

(g) In determining for the purposes of this act, whether or not work is suitable for an individual, the degree of risk involved to his health, safety, morals, his physical fitness, experience, training, past earnings, length of unemployment and prospects for obtaining local employment in his customary occupation, the distance of the work from his residence, and other pertinent factors shall be considered. No employment shall, in any event, be deemed suitable and benefits shall not be denied to any otherwise eligible individual for refusing to accept new work or to hold himself available for work under any of the following conditions:

(2) If the wages, hours, or other conditions of the work offered are substantially less favorable to the individual than those prevailing for similar work in the locality of the work offered Appellant contends that the school district sought to impose requirements upon her that violated her professional and ethical standards, and this gave her good cause to quit. She further alleges the new standards created a substantial change in the conditions of her employment, making her work "unsuitable." That these were "compelling and necessitous circumstances" which caused her to quit, and therefore her decision to quit was not voluntary.

The issue is whether Mrs. Fong quit her employment "voluntarily" and "without good cause." This Court has set forth the proper nature and scope of good cause in Burroughs v. Employment Security Agency, 86 Idaho 412, 387 P.2d 473 (1963), as follows:

"In order to constitute good cause, the circumstances which compel the decision to leave employment must be real, not imaginary, substantial not trifling, and reasonable, not whimsical; there must be some compulsion produced by extraneous and necessitous circumstances. The standard of what constitutes good cause is the standard of reasonableness as applied to the average man or woman, and not to the supersensitive; . . ."

The case of Broody v. Eddy Bakeries Co., 88 Idaho 165, 397 P.2d 256 (1964) followed with this language:

"A construction of 'good cause' as used in I.C. § 72-1366 must not be extended to include purely personal and (subjective) reasons which are unique to the employee--it must require that such cause is not a condition which by common knowledge is usual where accompanied by minor irritations. See Burroughs v. Employment Security Agency, 86 Idaho 412, 387 P.2d 473."

We have recently held that the "purely...