Hill v. INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST. NO. 25, 96,306.
| Decision Date | 06 September 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 96,306.,96,306. |
| Citation | 2002 OK CIV APP 97,57 P.3d 882 |
| Parties | Donna HILL, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 25 OF ADAIR COUNTY, Oklahoma, a.k.a. Stilwell Public Schools, and Floyd Cox, Jr., Betty Barker, Hiram McFarland, Mary Stilwell, Mike Pinkerton, and Gerald Whit, in their official capacity as members of the Board of Education of Independent Schools District No. 25 of Adair County, Oklahoma, a.k.a. Stilwell Public Schools, Defendants/Appellees. |
| Court | United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma |
Todd Hembree, Stilwell, for Plaintiff/Appellant.
J. Douglas Mann, Jerry A. Richardson, Tulsa, Lloyd E. Cole, Stilwell, for Defendants/Appellees.
Released for Publication by Order of the Court of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma, Division No. 3.
¶ 1 After a due process hearing, Appellee, Stilwell School District, dismissed a career teacher, Appellant, Donna Hill, who served as a certified high-school guidance counselor, on the grounds of moral turpitude and willful neglect of duty. Following the hearing, Hill filed a petition in the district court for a trial de novo. Finding Hill had falsified certain entries on the transcripts of several students, including that of her own daughter, and that such acts constituted willful neglect of duty and moral turpitude, the trial court sustained School District's decision to dismiss Hill. We affirm.
¶ 2 Acting upon teacher concerns about favoritism, the new Superintendent of the Stilwell School District, Dr. W. Neil Morton, appointed a faculty committee to investigate the integrity of academic records at Stilwell High School. One of the projects the committee undertook was to compare student transcripts with the final marks in teachers' grade books. Recording students' grades was apparently one of Hill's responsibilities as counselor.
¶ 3 The committee discovered one instance of a student's final grade being changed from an "F" to a "D-" in a required Senior English course; without this grade change, the student would not have been eligible to graduate. The committee also found that Hill posted a grade on another student's transcript for an Advanced Sociology course, a class not offered at Stilwell High School. Although Leon Hill, principal of Stilwell High School and husband of Appellant, Donna Hill, was the purported teacher of this class, the committee could find no evidence to show such a course had ever been taught at the school.
¶ 4 The committee further discovered that Hill had favored her daughter, a student at Stilwell High School, in connection with her daughter's switch from a chemistry class to a home economics class eleven weeks into the eighteen week semester. Hill's daughter received a final grade of "A" in the home economics class even though her chemistry grade, a "C-," should have been averaged with her home economics grade, making a final score of "A" a mathematical impossibility. Hill also changed her daughter's transcript to reflect that she had taken two non-existent courses. During the 1998-99 school year, Hill's daughter took the same home economics class, Food & Nutrition, two periods in a row in the fall and then signed up for back-to-back Clothing classes in the spring. Hill altered her daughter's official transcript to show that her daughter had taken two different classes: Food & Nutrition I and Food & Nutrition II in the first semester, and Clothing I and Clothing II in the second. Food & Nutrition II and Clothing II are not offered at Stilwell High School. Finally, Hill failed to assign credit points on her daughter's transcript for a particular class, thereby artificially enhancing her daughter's overall grade point average.1 ¶ 5 The committee notified Superintendent Morton of these findings in two separate reports concerning the integrity of student records at the school. On October 30, 2000, the superintendent notified Hill that he had made a recommendation to the Board of Education that she be dismissed from her employment for willful neglect of duty. Hill's due process hearing was originally scheduled for November 9, 2000, but was subsequently passed to January 10, 2001, to accommodate the holiday travel plans of Hill's counsel who had recently experienced a death in the family. Prior to November 9, 2000, School District provided Hill's counsel with copies of the committee's reports, which detail the facts set forth above upon which the superintendent based his dismissal recommendation. On December 29, 2000, Superintendent Morton notified Hill through her attorney that he was amending the notice of termination to include the additional statutory ground for dismissal of moral turpitude. 70 O.S.2001 § 6-101.22(A).
¶ 6 When the Board of Education convened on January 10, 2001, Hill's counsel objected to holding the due process hearing that day, arguing that Hill had not received the statutory minimum of twenty days in which to prepare a defense to the newly-added moral turpitude charge. The school board agreed to postpone the hearing until January 30, 2001, more than thirty days after Hill received notice of the additional ground for dismissal. At the conclusion of January 30th due process hearing, the Board voted to dismiss Hill from her employment with the Stilwell School District.
¶ 7 Hill petitioned the District Court of Adair County for a trial de novo pursuant to 70 O.S.2001 § 6-101.27. After a briefing cycle, the trial court heard oral arguments at which Hill's attorney declared that he and his client "stand on the transcript of the due process hearing." In an order dated May 9, 2001, the trial court affirmed the Board's decision to dismiss Hill.
¶ 8 "Because the Teachers Due Process Act statutorily modifies the common law at-will employment doctrine, we review the findings of fact of the trial court as if it were a law action tried to the court and give those findings of fact the same great deference we give those rendered by a jury." Andrews v. Independent Sch. Dist. No. 57, 2000 OK CIV APP 103, ¶ 3, 12 P.3d 491, 493; see also Hawzipta v. Independent Sch. Dist. No. I-004 of Noble County, 2000 OK CIV APP 113, ¶ 10, 13 P.3d 98, 100-01
. Hawzipta, ¶ 10, 13 P.3d at 101, citing Mitchell v. Ford Motor Credit Co., 1984 OK 18, 688 P.2d 42.
¶ 9 Hill asserts the Stilwell School District violated the Teacher Due Process Act, 70 O.S.2001 § 6-101.20 et seq. by: (1) failing to give her proper notice of the factual basis for its termination recommendation; (2) failing to admonish her and/or provide a reasonable amount of time for her to improve; (3) failing to give her sufficient time to respond to the charge of moral turpitude; and, (4) denying her a fair due process hearing by allowing testimony regarding certain facts pertaining to her husband's alleged misconduct during her hearing and by permitting the Superintendent's attorney to be present during the school board's deliberations. Hill further claims the evidence presented fails to support a charge of moral turpitude.2 In sum, Hill raises several technical due process challenges to the school board's decision and, secondarily, challenges the sufficiency of evidence supporting a finding a moral turpitude.
¶ 10 Article VI of Oklahoma's School Code defines a "teacher" as "a duly certified or licensed person who is employed to serve as a counselor, librarian or school nurse or in any instructional capacity." 70 O.S.2001 § 6-101.3. Dismissal is "the discontinuance of the teaching service of an administrator or teacher during the term of a written contract," whereas nonreemployment is "the nonrenewal of an administrator's or teacher's contract upon expiration of the contract." Id. Subsection 6-101.22 of The Teacher Due Process Act of 1990 lists willful neglect of duty and moral turpitude as two of seven grounds for dismissal or nonreemployment.
¶ 11 Subsection 6-101.26(A) of the Teacher Due Process Act provides when a superintendent recommends the dismissal of a teacher, the board of education must mail a copy of the recommendation to the teacher, specifying the statutory grounds and underlying facts supporting the recommendation, and notifying the teacher of her right to a hearing before the board. In addition, the hearing must take place no sooner than twenty days or later than sixty days after the teacher's receipt of the notice. 70 O.S.2001 § 6-101.26(A).
¶ 12 The notice Hill received in October, 2000, stated the recommendation for her dismissal was "based upon underlying facts in that you have willfully neglected your contractual and professional duties and responsibilities in dispensation and publication of student grades."3 Within ten days of the notice, Hill's attorney received copies of the faculty committee's two reports on the integrity of student records at the school, which set forth in detail the specific instances of transcript alterations for which Hill was allegedly responsible.
¶ 13 While Hill claims that these communications were not specific enough to comply with 70 O.S.2001 § 6-101.26(A), she fails to allege how she was in any way prejudiced thereby. To the contrary, the notice, with the reports that followed several days later were very specific. Hill's attorney had ample opportunity to interview whomever he wanted and review any and all pertinent documents in preparing his client's defense.
¶ 14 As for the subsequent moral turpitude charge, it was based on the same facts as the willful neglect of duty charge. Hill has failed to show how she was prejudiced by the lack of specificity in the notice of the additional charge. The...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Bley v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No I-002 of Okla. Cnty.
...v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 25 of Adair Cnty., 57 P.3d 882, 886 (Okla.Civ.App. 2002) (quoting Okla. Stat. tit. 40 § 6-101.24(A)) (alterations in Hill). Importantly, the admonishment applies to “teachers who have remediable teaching performance problems that could result in dismissal for willfu......
-
Ballard v. School Dist. No. 4 of Bryan County, Ok, No. 00-7099.
...the term "moral turpitude," and most of the teacher cases involve sexual misconduct or dishonesty. See, e.g., Hill v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 25, 57 P.3d 882 (Okla. Ct.App.2002) (teacher who made numerous false changes to student transcripts properly dismissed for moral turpitude); Andrews, 1......