Magenheim v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. of Riverview Gardens

• Citation: 347 S.W.2d 409
• Decision Date: 14 June 1961
• Docket Number: No. 30833,30833
• Parties: Milton D. MAGENHEIM, (Plaintiff) Appellant, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the SCHOOL DISTRICT OF RIVERVIEW GARDENS, and William R. Pelster, William Goulding, E. W. Nielson, Jr., Vernon Hixson, Donald P. Shine, and H. Ken Nelson, as Members of the Board of Education of the School District of Riverview Gardens, (Defendants) Respondents.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Missouri (US)

Page 409

347 S.W.2d 409

Milton D. MAGENHEIM, (Plaintiff) Appellant, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the SCHOOL DISTRICT OF RIVERVIEW

GARDENS, and William R. Pelster, William Goulding, E. W.

Nielson, Jr., Vernon Hixson, Donald P. Shine, and H. Ken

Nelson, as Members of the Board of Education of the School

District of Riverview Gardens, (Defendants) Respondents.

No. 30833.

St. Louis Court of Appeals, Missouri.

June 14, 1961.

Motion for Rehearing or for Transfer to Supreme Court Denied

July 11, 1961.

Paul W. Preisler, St. Louis, for appellant.

Aubrey B. Hamilton, St. Louis, for respondents.

ELGIN T. FULLER, Special Judge.

This cause was transferred to this court by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, finding that a construction of the Constitution of the United States or of this state was not presented and preserved for determination within the meaning of Article V, Section 3 of the Constitution of Missouri, V.A.M.S., transferred it to this Court. See Magenheim v. Board of Education of School District of Riverview Gardens et al., Mo., 340 S.W.2d 619.

Appellant-Plaintiff, Milton D. Magenheim, a school teacher, filed his petition June 30, 1959, against The Board of Education of the Town School District of Riverview Gardens and the six members of the Board. The petition is in two counts.

The first count seeks damages for breach of contract by the defendants, in that the defendants failed to continue the employment of plaintiff for the school year 1959-1960. Plaintiff contends that under the provision of the written contract executed by the parties April 9, 1958, and the 1958 revised Salary Schedule For Teachers of the School District of Riverview Gardens, St. Louis County, Missouri, adopted by the Board of Education, he acquired a continuing or permanent tenure as a teacher with the respondent-defendant District, and that the defendants must continually employ and issue to plaintiff a teaching contract from year to year, revised as to salary according to the 1958 revised Salary Schedule. Plaintiff urges that Paragraph 5 of the 1958 revised Salary Schedule creates the commonly called 'tenure contract.' Plaintiff contends that the Board of Education was required, under Paragraph 5 of the 1958 revised Salary Schedule to notify him in writing of his deficiencies and to give him an opportunity to improve before his services as a teacher could be terminated. He seeks in Count I an order directing defendants to restore him to his teacher's position, or, in the alternative, damages in the sum of $6,800, his salary under the Salary Schedule for 1959-1960, and for such sums as due him in each succeeding year thereafter for the alleged breach of contract in failing to continue the employment of plaintiff as a teacher.

Count II is an action for a declaratory judgment, a temporary restraining order, a permanent injunction and for damages. Appellant's claim for relief in Count II primarily seeks a determination of the validity of Paragraph 15 of the 1955 Salary Schedule and Paragraph 18 of the 1958 Salary Schedule. The two paragraphs are essentially the same in principle. The pertinent parts of both provide: 'Each person on this salary schedule shall join the professional organizations which include the Community Teachers' Association, the National Education Association, the Missouri State Teachers' Association, and the St. Louis Suburban Teachers' Association. Failure to join such organizations precludes the benefits derived through the salary schedule and places such person outside the salary schedule.'

Count II then alleges that the appellant, hereinafter referred to as Plaintiff, voluntarily and from his own free choice, paid dues to the National Education Association and the Missouri State Teachers' Association, but that he paid the dues to the other two professional organizations, the Community Teachers' Association and the St. Louis Suburban Teachers' Association, only because the Salary Schedule of 1955 and 1958 provided that a failure to join such four organizations precluded the benefits derived through the salary schedule and placed such person outside the salary schedule. The total sum paid by plaintiff as dues to the two organizations which he now claims were involuntarily and coercively made was $32. However, during each school year of his employment plaintiff did pay his membership dues to all four professional organizations. Plaintiff here contends that said provisions of the Salary Schedules are null and void, discriminate between teachers employed by the Board as to the amount of salary paid to each teacher based upon membership or lack of membership in the four named organizations, and that the Board had no legal authority to so provide. He asks in Count II for a declaratory judgment to determine and declare that Paragraphs 15 and 18 of the Salary Schedules of 1955 and 1958, respectively, are void and beyond the legal authority of the Board, asks for a restraining order and permanent injunction against the Board of Education enjoining the Board from enforcing said sections, and that the Court render judgment for plaintiff in the sum of $32 which plaintiff paid as membership dues to the Community Teachers' Association and the St. Louis Suburban Teachers' Association.

The trial court sustained defendants' Motions to Dismiss both counts of plaintiff's petition on the ground that the petition failed to state a claim against the defendants upon which relief could be granted and entered a judgment dismissing the cause. From that judgment the plaintiff has appealed.

The Salary Schedules, the Teacher's Contract employing plaintiff for the school year 1958-1959, the written notice dated April 10, 1959, by the Board of the plaintiff that plaintiff was not being re-employed for the 1959-1960 school year, and the written notice of the Board to the plaintiff, dated May 13, 1959, wherein the Board reaffirmed its original decision not to re-employ him, are attached to and made part of the petition.

We will first consider if the pleaded facts of Count I state a claim against the defendants upon which relief could be granted. Did plaintiff state facts entitling him to reinstatement as a teacher or to damages upon the ground that he had acquired a continuing or permanent tenure as a teacher? We think not.

The relief that plaintiff seeks under Count I can be granted only if a school teacher employed by a Town School District could be granted permanent tenure as a teacher. The contract between a Town School District Board and a school teacher is for one year. Section 163.080 RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S. The statutory provisions for re-employment of teachers are set out in Section 163.090 RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S. Under this section the Board is required to notify each teacher in writing concerning his or her re-employment or lack thereof on or before the 15th day of April of the year in which the contract then in force expires. The failure of the Board to give such notice constitutes re-employment on the same terms as those provided in the contract of the current fiscal year. The Board is required to present to each such teacher not so notified a regular contract the same as if the teacher had been regularly re-employed. The Missouri Supreme Court has decided that Section 163.090, supra, extending a teacher's contract for another year if such teacher is not notified in writing before April 15th, does not change the legal effect of teacher's annual contracts for each school year, and does not establish any sort of tenure for teachers. Bergmann et al. v. Board of Education of Normandy Consolidated School Dist. et al., 360 Mo. 644, 230 S.W.2d 714. Section 163.090 clearly contemplates the execution of a new, specific and distinct annual contract for each year. The point is made clear by the Springfield Court of Appeals in State ex rel. Joslin v. School Dist. No. 7 of Jasper County, Mo.App., 302 S.W.2d 497, loc. cit. 500 where it is stated:

'Section 165.320 plainly provides in unambiguous and unequivocal terms that no teacher shall be employed 'unless a majority of the whole board shall vote therefor' * * *; and, in so far as Sections 165.320 and 163.090 are in pari materia, it is our duty so to construe them as to harmonize and give effect to all provisions of both statutes * * *. No reason, either legal or otherwise, is suggested or apparent why the above quoted provision of Section 165.320 should be construed as applicable only to the first year of employment by a school district; but, on the contrary, considerations of reason, logic and public policy would seem to support our conclusion that the prohibition against employment of a teacher 'unless a majority of the whole board shall vote therefor' is applicable as to each year of employment or re-employment particularly in view of the fact that, as we have noted, Section 163.090 does not establish tenure for teachers but contemplates 'the execution of a new, specific and distinct annual contract' for each year.'

The Supreme Court of Missouri in Dye v. School Dist. No. 32 of Pulaski County et al., 355 Mo. 231, 195 S.W.2d 874, 879 held that Section 10342a, Laws 1943, p. 890 (present Section 163.090) providing that a failure on the part of a School Board to give a teacher written notice on or before April 15th shall constitute a re-employment, did not change the legal effect of the teacher's contract, and stated, 'The new law merely imposed a statutory duty on both parties to give notice of its (the contract's) continuance or not.'

In Brooks et al. v. School Dist. of City of Moberly, 8 Cir., 267 F.2d 733, it was decided that a teacher, on the expiration of his contract, has neither contractual nor statutory rights to continued employment.

The statutory law of Missouri (except Section 165.590 RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S. and other sections pertaining to School Districts in cities of 500,000 or over (165.563-165.653)), as construed in State ex rel. Wood v. Board of Education of City of St....