Hudson v. School Dist. of Kansas City

• Decision Date: 26 February 1979
• Docket Number: AFL-CIO,Nos. KCD,s. KCD
• Parties: Norman B. HUDSON, as a representative of a class consisting of the members of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers, Local 691,, an Unincorporated Association, and Lawrence R. Bates, as a representative of a class consisting of the members of the Kansas City School Administrator's Association, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The SCHOOL DISTRICT OF KANSAS CITY, Missouri, Defendants-Respondents. 29507-511.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 301

578 S.W.2d 301

Norman B. HUDSON, as a representative of a class consisting of the members of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers Local 691, AFL-CIO, an Unincorporated Association, and Lawrence R. Bates, as a representative of a class consisting of the members of the Kansas City School Administrator's Association, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The SCHOOL DISTRICT OF KANSAS CITY, Missouri, Defendants-Respondents.

Nos. KCD 29507-511.

Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District.

Feb. 26, 1979.

Thomas J. Cox, Jr., Kansas City, for plaintiff-appellant Bates.

Doyle R. Pryor, Jolley, Moran, Walsh, Hager & Gordon, Kansas City, for plaintiff-appellant Hudson.

William H. Sanders, D. Brook Bartlett, John K. Brungardt, Blackwell, Sanders, Matheny, Weary & Lombardi, Kansas City, for defendants-respondents.

Before SOMERVILLE, P. J., and SHANGLER and DIXON, JJ.

DIXON, Judge.

This consolidated appeal is from class action suits brought by Norman B. Hudson, representing the Kansas City Federation of Teachers, Local 691, AFL-CIO, and Lawrence R. Bates, representing the Kansas City School Administrator's Association, against the School District of Kansas City, Missouri. The suits attack proceedings by the School District which resulted in the furloughing of several hundred probationary teachers and reassignment of a large number of administrative employees. Filed as class actions, the suits allege violations of the Missouri "Sunshine Law" § 610.010 Et seq. RSMo Supp.1975, by the School District's Board of Directors. The petitions were in two counts. The entire thrust of the suit was for injunctive relief. Count I sought a temporary injunction and a continuing injunction against future meetings as well as an injunction against implementation of the Board action. Count II requested mandatory relief by way of undoing the actions taken and monetary relief incident to the equitable claim.

Broadly stated, the contentions of the parties raise two basic issues of interpretation of the "Sunshine Law" § 610.010 Et seq. RSMo Supp.1975. The first issue relates to the interpretation of the language of § 610.025 RSMo Supp.1975, Viz., "meetings relating to the hiring, firing, or promotion of personnel of a public governmental body may be a closed meeting, closed record, or closed vote."

The second issue is the scope of injunctive relief and the propriety of the trial court's refusal of such relief.

The parties, in the trial to the court for injunctive relief, developed the events at the challenged meetings in exhaustive detail. Summarily stated, the evidence developed the following:

The Kansas City, Missouri, School District Board of Directors, faced by a 7 million dollar budget deficit for the coming fiscal year, met in executive sessions on April 4, 6, and 7, 1976. As announced by the Board president, the purpose of the closed meetings was "to consider a matter of personnel."

At the April 4 meeting, the major activity was a slide presentation by William D. Conklin, Assistant Superintendent in charge of Business. The purpose of the presentation "was to show the Board how the administration proposed to solve a 7.3 million-dollar problem . . ." The major proposals represented by the slides involved major program reductions, school closings, and cuts in areas such as transportation. The impact on personnel in the affected programs was shown not only by the dollars-saved figure, but by a number of employees in parentheses following each proposed program reduction. Both Mr. Conklin and Dr. Fields testified that, although it was announced at the first of the meeting that the discussion should be confined to personnel matters, there was some general discussion of the proposed program reductions.

The executive meeting was reconvened on April 6. At the first of the two sessions on that day, slides were shown to demonstrate the effect of eliminating the directors' position (an administrative position established under School District policy), and to show other proposed reorganizations of the School District's administration. Dr. Fields, acting Superintendent of Schools, had been asked to eliminate the directors' position at the April 4 meeting; the April 6 meeting reflected his response to that direction by the Board and to the other proposed reductions made during the April 4 meeting. No Board action was taken on the proposals at either the April 4 or the first April 6 meeting.

At the second session of the April 6 meetings, a session that was to last until the early hours of April 7, the Board took several major actions on the basis of the material presented at the earlier sessions. A group of 92 resource and remedial teachers were reappointed with an addition of $30 per month to their teacher salaries; 110 other employees had salary or assignment changes made. On motion, two individual teachers had their contracts terminated or not renewed for the next year.

As reflected by the record, the two most controversial actions taken by the Board, and the actions which resulted in these lawsuits, were the decision to reemploy 465 probationary teachers who would be put on unpaid leave of absence and the decision to reemploy 19 administrative employees in positions of diminished responsibility. The effect of these actions was to completely eliminate some programs by the elimination of the personnel in those programs. Programs involving school nurses, elementary industrial arts and physical education, elementary and secondary teachers' aides and secondary library clerks were affected by the budget cuts involving personnel.

That these presentations were, in fact, designed to provide the School Board with information to make policy decisions concerning the allocation of funds is an inescapable conclusion. Dr. Fields, the architect of the proposed changes, testified that the proposals had the effect of eliminating programs, and further, that the involved recommendations concerning maintenance reductions, school closings, and program eliminations by elimination of personnel in those programs. Dr. Fields also testified that the Board was considering options in resolving a "seven million dollar" problem. Dr. Fields stated that the selection of those persons to be "furloughed," as he expressed it, was to be made by the personnel department of the School District and not by the School Board. That the impelling motivation of the actions taken was a financial one and not a determination of merit, vis-a-vis the individual, is apparent from the minutes of the Board which deferred action on the elimination of the program of Home School Coordinators to see if funds were available for this program. The notices to the affected personnel likewise referred to a decline in enrollment and the financial condition of the district as the rationale for the furloughs and reassignments respectively. All of the witnesses in the case were educators involved in the administration of the Kansas City School District or were Board members. Understandably, there was considerable sparring over semantics, but there is no real issue of credibility.

In short, as both parties concede and as the circuit court found, the actions at the meeting of the School Board "constituted the most massive reorganization of personnel in the history of the school district during the past thirty years."

Before discussion of the issues in detail, a review of the statutory provisions and the history of the Sunshine Law is helpful. In Missouri, the guiding provision is Chapter 610, enacted in 1973. ¹ The relevant portions of that statute are as follows:

610.010. Definitions . . . (RSMo Supp.1977)

. . . (2) "Public governmental body ", any constitutional or statutory governmental entity, including any state body, agency, board, bureau, commission, committee, department, division, or any political subdivision of the state, of any county or of any municipal government, school district or special purpose district, and any other governmental deliberative body under the direction of three or more elected or appointed members having rule-making or quasi-judicial power;

(3) "Public meeting ", any meeting, formal or informal, regular or special, or any public governmental body, at which any public business is discussed, decided or public policy formulated; . . . .

610.025. Closed meetings authorized, when

. . . (4) Any nonjudicial mental health proceedings and proceedings involving physical health, scholastic probation, scholastic expulsion or scholastic graduation, welfare cases, meetings relating to the hiring, firing or promotion of personnel of a public governmental body may be a closed meeting, closed record, or closed vote.

610.030. Injunctive relief authorized.

The circuit court of this state shall have the jurisdiction to issue injunctions to enforce the provisions of sections 610.010 to 610.030 and 610.100 to 610.115.

There is no dispute here that the School Board of Kansas City is a public governmental body under § 610.010(2) RSMo Supp.1977.

The purpose of the Sunshine Law has been delineated in two Missouri cases. Cohen v. Poelker, 520 S.W.2d 50 (Mo. banc 1975) and Pulitzer Publishing Co. v. McNeal, 575 S.W.2d 802 (Mo.App.1978). Cohen v. Poelker, supra, was the first test of the statute's constitutionality and purpose, which was explicated in the following terms:

"The several sections of Chapter 610, considered together, speak loudly and clearly for the General Assembly that its intent in enacting the Sunshine Law, so-called was that all meetings of members of public governmental bodies (except those described in § 610.025) at which the peoples' business is considered must be open to the people and not conducted in secrecy, and also that the records of the body and the votes of its members must be open." Cohen, supra at 52.

Pulitzer v. McNeal, supra, the most recent case on the subject, describes the tension between the general protection and specific exemption sections of the...