Johns v. Jefferson Davis Parish School Bd.

• Decision Date: 18 June 1963
• Docket Number: No. 861,861
• Citation: 154 So.2d 581
• Parties: Hampton C. JOHNS, Sr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JEFFERSON DAVIS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

Page 581

154 So.2d 581

Hampton C. JOHNS, Sr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JEFFERSON DAVIS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 861.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

June 18, 1963.

Edwards & Edwards, by Edwin W. Edwards, Crowley, for plaintiff-appellant.

Bernard N. Marcantel, Jennings, for defendant-appellee. defendant-appellee.

Before TATE, HOOD, and CULPEPPER, JJ.

TATE, Judge.

The plaintiff Johns was a tenured high school principal. After notice and a formal hearing, LSA-R.S. 17:443, the defendant school board dismissed the plaintiff from the school system on the grounds of incompetency and neglect of duty.

This is a suit for judicial review of his dismissal. The trial court rejected the plaintiff's demand for reinstatement, finding that the school board had not abused its discretion and had discharged the plaintiff upon the basis of sufficient proof of incompetency.

The plaintiff appeals this adverse ruling. He contends that the school board acted arbitrarily and unreasonably in discharging him and that the evidence at the school board hearing does not prove him to be guilty of such incompetence or neglect of duty as to warrant his discharge as a tenured permanent teacher.

The plaintiff's suit for judicial review of his dismissal by the school board is brought under LSA-R.S. 17:443, which provides: 'A permanent teacher shall not be removed from office except upon written and signed charges of wilful neglect of duty, or incompetency or dishonesty, * * * and then only if found guilty after a hearing by the school board * * *. If a permanent teacher is found guilty by a school board, * * * the teacher may * * * petition a court of competent jurisdiction for a full hearing to review the action of the school board, and the court shall have jurisdiction to affirm or reverse the action of the school board in the matter. * * *'

Our Supreme Court has recently summarized the standard of judicial review of the action of a school board in removing a tenured teacher, as follows: '* * * When there is a rational basis for an administrative board's discretionary determinations which are supported by substantial evidence insofar as factually required, the court has no right to substitute its judgment for the administrative board's or to interfere with the latter's bona fide exercise of its discretion.' Lewing v. De Soto Parish School Board, 238 La. 43, 113 So.2d 462, 466.

The plaintiff Johns has been a teacher since 1930. He has been employed since 1936 by the defendant school board. He has been a principal of the colored school in Welsh since 1942. In 1959, a high school department was added to this school, and the plaintiff then became high school principal of the entire school at the site. Approximately five hundred students attend the school at which the plaintiff Johns was principal.

The record reflects that in March of 1962 one of the teenage high school girls was found to be pregnant. The witnesses from the school testified that there was an 'uproar' as a result. The subsequent police investigation revealed that at least two of the high school girls had engaged in sexual relations.

The police investigation had also revealed that several of the acts of sexual promiscuity had occurred during school hours. Counsel for the plaintiff-appellant suggests that, because of the community uproar over the pregnancy, the principal was made the scapegoat for these surreptitious acts he could not reasonably have known of nor prevented.

Shortly after the police investigation of the incidents in question, and apparently as a result thereof, the plaintiff was charged with eleven specified charges of wilful neglect of duty and incompetency. He was ordered to show cause at a board hearing why upon such charges he should not be removed as a permanent teacher and high school principal. (We will refer to these as Charges 1 through 11; see notice of hearing at Tr. 7--9, Exhibit 'B'.)

At the hearing, held twenty days after the notice, the school board found the plaintiff to be guilty of wilful neglect of duty and incompetence in eight respects. (We will refer to these as Findings 1 through 8; see school board resolution ordering the dismissal of the plaintiff as permanent teacher and as high school principal, Tr. 5--6, Exhibit 'A'.)

At the outset, we must comment that the generalized findings of guilty by the school board do not correspond with the more specific charges of neglect of duty and incompetence upon which the hearing was based. It is apparent from the record that many of the specific allegations contained in the charges were not proven or else had been satisfactorily explained. Nevertheless, because of the generalized language of the findings, as well as because of the failure of the findings to correspond with the charges in either language or order or subject matter, it is somewhat difficult to ascertain the school board's conclusions of guilty or not as to most of the specific delinquencies with which the plaintiff was charged by formal notice prior to the hearing.

This difficulty is increased because some of the evidence taken at the hearing concerned alleged delinquencies with which the plaintiff had not been charged prior to the hearing.

Further, based upon such evidence, the board found the plaintiff to be guilty as to certain delinquencies with which he had not been charged by the formal notice, especially: Finding 5, relating to his alleged failure to carry out recommendations of his superiors; Finding 8, concerning his alleged failure to furnish the names of his lunchroom committee; and Finding 2, concerning his alleged failure to make required reports, insofar as it refers to other than the specific delinquencies of which the plaintiff was given notice by Charges 6, 9, and 10. ¹

Evidence was improperly received as to these alleged delinquencies with which the plaintiff had not been charged by formal notice prior to the hearing. The statutory requirement of formal notice and hearing contemplates a reasonable and substantial compliance with the general principle of due process of law, which contemplates that the teacher be given formal notice of charges against him made with sufficient specificity that he be formally enabled to prepare any defense he may have to these charges; and the principle also reasonably contemplates that the hearing be limited to the formal charges of which the teacher is given notice prior to the hearing, in order that he may have a reasonable opportunity to examine and refute the evidence tendered against him and to raise any legal defense to it which he may have. See excellent discussion of the question in King v. Brown, La.App. 2 Cir., 115 So.2d 405; also Immel v. Brown, La.App. 3 Cir., 143 So.2d 156. Cf., comment in Lewing v. De Soto Parish School Board, cited above, at 113 So.2d 466. 'At the outset, we might state that the eleven charges are couched in general language. They do not specify definite acts; neither do they state the number of times the dereliction of duty was committed, nor specify the dates on which infractions occurred. Nothing is itemized on pin-pointed.'

Evaluation of Charges.

The eleven formal charges against the plaintiff fall into several main groups, each of which we will discuss separately, as follows:

( a) Sexual promiscuity of students: Charges 1, 2, and 3A relate to the plaintiff's alleged failure to maintain adequate supervision and discipline so as to prevent sexual relations between the students on school property or during school hours. Without detailing the extensive evidence as to this, we will simply state that the four isolated incidents of sexual misconduct during school hours were proven to have occurred secretly and through the students' surreptitious violation of adequate school regulations. The evidence fully indicates that the plaintiff could not reasonably have known of nor prevented these incidents, nor does any evidence support that with regard to them he is guilty of any incompetence or wilful neglect of duty.

( b) School lunch problems: Charges 5 and 7 involve alleged violations of school lunch regulations. Without detailed discussion, we will simply state that evidence as to the trivial and immediately-corrected incidents concerned does not prove any incompetence or wilful neglect of duty on the part of the plaintiff.

Charge 6 concerns the plaintiff's alleged delinquency with regard to having forms completed for the applications of the parents of indigent children to have free school lunches. The parish lunchroom supervisor stated that on three occasions during the school year she had asked to look at the forms (which were maintained within the principal's office since his was the primary responsibility in the matter) and had found these forms very incomplete.

These legal-size page forms are detailed and rather complex, and the plaintiff testified that the parents of most of the indigent colored children concerned were too illiterate to complete them.

We note the supervisor's testimony that other schools also were fairly lax in the matter of completing these forms and that the plaintiff's alleged delinquency in this regard was not prior to the present charges considered important enough to be the subject of a formal request for improvement (as, for instance, was the subject matter of Charge 5). We further note the plaintiff's testimony at the time of the hearing that he had himself (since the parents could not do so) finally completed each of these application forms, which were available for the inspection of the supervisors.

Under all the circumstances, we believe that the plaintiff's failure to comply with the requirement that he secure the parents' completion of this minor set of forms, included among his myriad other and more important responsibilities, should not be the basis of formal removal action, in the absence of specific warning by his superiors and an opportunity to correct any...