Wilkinsburg Borough School Dist. v. Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission
| Decision Date | 11 October 1972 |
| Citation | 6 Pa.Cmwlth. 378,295 A.2d 609 |
| Parties | WILKINSBURG BOROUGH SCHOOL DISTRICT and Charles W. Krepps, Jr., Superintendent, Appellants, v. PENNSYLVANIA HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION and Novella Nichols, Appellees. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court |
Argued Sept. 7, 1972.
Henry G. Beamer, III, Metz, Cook, Hanna & Kelly, J. Donald Cook, Pittsburgh, for appellants.
Mark A. Senick, Asst. Counsel, Human Relations Comm., J. Shane Creamer, Atty. Gen., Pittsburgh, for appellees.
Before BOWMAN, President Judge, and CRUMLISH, Jr. KRAMER, WILKINSON, MENCER and ROGERS, JJ.
This appeal is from an adjudication of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission which concluded that appellants, the Wilkinsburg Borough School District and its superintendent, had unlawfully discriminated against one of its teachers in violation of Section 5(a) of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act [1] in subjecting said teacher to unfair and unequal terms and conditions of employment on account of her race and to an unlawfully discriminatory method of evaluation. The Commission's action resulted from a complaint filed by Novella J. Nichols, a temporary professional employee of the district employed in the fall of 1969 and whose employment by the district was terminated in May 1971.
After hearing, the Commission issued its adjudication in which it made seventeen findings of fact and five conclusions of law. Appellants contend that a number of the findings of fact and conclusions of law are without any support in the record or are not supported by substantial evidence. They also argue that the Commission acted arbitrarily and with bias contrary to minimum due process requirements for administrative agencies having quasi judicial powers, and finally that the Commission erred in not giving any weight to certain provisions of the Public School Code of 1949, Act of March 10, 1949, P.L. 30, concerning approval of curricular and teaching materials as relevant to the activity of Mrs Nichols which triggered the events leading to her reassignment and subsequent unsatisfactory performance rating.
As this appeal comes before us under the provisions of the Administrative Agency Law [2] pursuant to Section 10 of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, our review is to determine whether the adjudication 'is in accordance with law' or whether 'any finding of fact made by the agency and necessary to support its adjudication is not supported by substantial evidence.' As stated in Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. Chester School District, 209 Pa.Super. 37, 224 A.2d 811 (1966), our scope of review is a limited one and the agency will be sustained unless its adjudication was based on facts or conclusions not supported by evidence or unless it has committed clear abuse of discretion, exceeded its power or based its conclusions upon erroneous interpretation of the law.
Consistent with the scope of our review we have carefully considered the record made before the Commission in relation to its findings of fact and conclusions of law.
As several of its crucial findings of fact are either refuted by the record or without any support in the record and others constitute conclusions of law, not fact, upon which its ultimate conclusions of law partially rest, we must set aside the adjudication and final order.
The genesis of this case lies in a personal dispute between two school teachers having common pupils in a grade school with a predominantly black school population. For no reason supported by the record, the Commission attributes to the school district and its superintendent not only responsibility for the attitude and actions of the one school teacher but then proceeds to find bias on the part of the school district and its officials in the action taken to resolve this dispute. In reaching its conclusion the Commission totally ignores open and declared defiance on the part of the other school teacher in performance of the responsibilities assigned to her after the school district officials attempted to solve the problem by assigning both teachers to identical new teaching assignments at different schools.
Novella Nichols, the complainant, a black teacher, was employed as a temporary professional employee by the district at the beginning of the 1969--1970 school year. To become a permanent professional employee, completion of two years of teaching with satisfactory rating is required.
In early March 1971, an incident between complainant and a white teacher occurred...
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