Knudson v. Boundary County School Dist. No. 101
| Decision Date | 29 December 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 13732,No. 101,101,13732 |
| Citation | 104 Idaho 93,656 P.2d 753 |
| Parties | , 8 Ed. Law Rep. 843 Leslie KNUDSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOUNDARY COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 101, Board of Trustees of Boundary County School District, and Leonard Kucera, Jr., Ray Dinning, Irma Clark, Joe Richardson and Harold Stephenson, the members of said board, Defendants-Respondents. |
| Court | Idaho Court of Appeals |
Byron Johnson, Boise, for plaintiff-appellant.
Peter B. Wilson, Wilson & Walter, Bonners Ferry, for defendants-respondents.
We are asked to decide whether a local school board should be compelled to re-employ a teacher whose contract was not renewed after her first year of service. Leslie Knudson began teaching in the Boundary County school district on August 30, 1978. By mid-September she encountered student behavior problems, and later that month one of her seventh grade classes staged what she called a "rebellion." As the academic year progressed, Ms. Knudson's teaching was evaluated by the school principal. In the spring of 1979, the principal noted that Ms. Knudson still needed to "work at classroom control," but characterized her general performance as "satisfactory." He recommended that she be rehired for a second year.
However, a divided school board declined to follow the recommendation. Responding to parental complaints, and citing a perceived need for "a more constructive teacher-student relationship" in the classroom, three of the five school board members voted to deny a second-year contract. The teacher brought this action, seeking a writ of mandate to compel the school board to rehire her. She contended that the school district should have put her on probation before deciding not to renew her contract. The court below entered summary judgment in favor of the school district. We affirm.
The scope of our review is limited by two constraints. First, because this is an appeal from a summary judgment, we need determine only whether there are genuine issues of material fact, and whether the school district is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. I.R.C.P. 56(c). The teacher has conceded that the material facts are not in dispute. It remains for us to decide whether the judgment was correct as a matter of law.
The second constraint is more subtle. It arises from the nature of relief sought by the teacher. A writ of mandate may be obtained, to compel administrative action, only when the party seeking the writ "has a clear legal right to have an act performed [,] ... the officer against whom the writ is sought has a clear duty to act ... and ... the act [does] not require the exercise of discretion." Saviers v. Richey, 96 Idaho 413, 415, 529 P.2d 1285, 1287 (1974); see I.C. § 7-302. Applying this general standard to a case where a discharged teacher sought reinstatement, our Supreme Court recently held (a) that judicial review was limited to determining whether the teacher had a "clear legal right" to reinstatement; and (b) that if the act of reinstatement were discretionary with the school board, a writ of mandate would not issue unless the board had discharged the teacher "arbitrarily, unjustly and in abuse of discretion...." Kolp v. Board of Trustees, 102 Idaho 320, 323, 629 P.2d 1153, 1156 (1981). 1
We believe the present case commands a scope of review even narrower than that described in Kolp. Where--as here--a teacher seeks a writ of mandate, not for reinstatement during the term of a contract, but to compel continued employment after a first-year contract has expired, review is limited to determining whether the teacher has a clear legal right to the relief sought. The judicial inquiry does not extend, as it did in Kolp, to whether the school board acted "arbitrarily, unjustly and in abuse of discretion." The scope of review is narrowed, in the type of case before us, because there are two categories of public school teachers in Idaho. Teachers who have served three or more consecutive years in the same school district are entitled to "automatic renewal" of their contracts each year, unless the school board determines that, for "just and reasonable cause," a contract should not be renewed. I.C. §§ 33-1212, 1215. Teachers like Leslie Knudson, with fewer years of service, have no such expectancy of continued employment from year to year.
The second part of the holding in Kolp --referring to abuse of discretion by a school board--reflects a broadening of the focus of mandamus proceedings in response to claims that legally cognizable interests have been wrongfully denied or impaired. See, e.g., the claims asserted in Wellard v. Marcum, 82 Idaho 232, 351 P.2d 482 (1960), and in cases compiled at 55 C.J.S. Mandamus § 133 (1948), cited with approval in Kolp.
No such broadening of the focus is necessary in the present case. The teacher here has no substantive entitlement to a second-year employment contract; and she claims no deprivation of due process in connection with any such entitlement. See Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972); Loebeck v. Idaho State Board of Education, 96 Idaho 459, 530 P.2d 1149 (1975); compare Robinson v. Joint School District No. 150, 100 Idaho 263, 596 P.2d 436 (1979). Rather, she urges that the school board be compelled to afford her a second-year contract as a remedy against the board's failure to comply with an asserted statutory requirement of probation before deciding not to re-employ her. Consequently, we have no occasion to consider whether, in light of the teacher's performance, the school board acted "arbitrarily, unjustly and in abuse of discretion." We consider only whether the teacher had a "clear legal right" to probation as a prerequisite to the board's decision not to renew her contract.
The teacher's claim of a right to probation is based upon I.C. § 33-513(6). 2 Section 33-513 generally enumerates the powers and duties of school boards with respect to professional personnel employed by the school districts. Subsection (6) relates specifically to teachers who have not completed three successive years of service and who, therefore, have no continuing entitlement to employment from year to year.
When this subsection originally was enacted in 1973, it required school boards "[t]o develop guidelines and procedures for the supervision and evaluation" of such teachers. It directed school boards to notify the teachers by May 15 whether they would be re-employed during the next school year. It further provided that if a decision had been made not to re-employ a teacher, the notice would contain a statement of reasons, and the teacher would be entitled to an "informal review" of the decision. 1973 Idaho Sess.Laws, ch. 126, § 1, p. 241. As part of the same bill, the Legislature also amended another statute, I.C. § 33-1212, which relates to teachers with automatically renewable contracts. The following language was added to § 33-1212:
Before a board of trustees can determine not to renew the contract of ... [a teacher] whose contract would otherwise be automatically renewed, or to renew the contract of any such person at a reduced salary, such person shall be entitled to a probationary period.... [1973 Idaho Sess.Laws, ch. 126, § 2, pp. 242-43.]
No comparable language was included in § 33-513(6).
In 1975 the Legislature's attention again turned to § 33-513(6). The statute was amended by substituting the phrase "establish criteria" for "develop guidelines." The Legislature also added the requirements that the teachers governed by this subsection be evaluated prior to the beginning of the second semester of the school year, and that "a probationary period" be established "when any such teacher's work is found to be unsatisfactory." 1975 Idaho Sess.Laws, ch. 256, § 1, p. 701. Following enactment of the 1975 amendments to § 33-513(6), the school district in this case adopted policies providing that teachers be evaluated by staff in December of each year; that teachers with deficient performance be put on probation; and that summaries of evaluation reports be furnished to the school board each May, for consideration in re-employment decisions.
This case turns upon the meaning of the 1975 amendments and of the school district policies adopted thereunder. The teacher has contended that the statutory requirement of probation for unsatisfactory work, and the inclusion of probation in the school district's policies, demonstrate an intent to give a teacher the benefit of probation before the school board denies re-employment for any performance-related reason. The argument is intuitively appealing. But the problem with the teacher's contention is that the 1975 amendments to § 33-513(6) stopped short of stating explicitly what the 1973 amendment to § 33-1212 had said--that a school board is prohibited from deciding not to renew a teacher's contract unless the teacher first has been afforded a probationary period.
The district court, in granting summary judgment to the school district, relied entirely upon the lack of a linguistic connection between probation and the re-employment decision in § 33-513(6). The district judge simply took the statute as he found it, adding nothing to its literal terms by judicial construction. This restrained approach is proper where the statute is unambiguous and clearly expresses the intent of the Legislature. E.g., Swensen v. Buildings, Inc., 93 Idaho 466, 463 P.2d 932 (1970). However, in our view, § 33-513(6) is not such a statute. The purpose served by the statutory requirement of probation is not clear. Probation is not expressly tied to the re-employment decision; and the statute, on its face, recites no other purpose that can be ascribed to it. Yet the requirement of probation must serve some purpose. The language of a statute will be interpreted, if possible, to give force and effect to each of its provisions. E.g., Stucki v. Loveland, 94 Idaho 621, 495 P.2d 571 (1972). C...
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