TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas National Education Association officials said Thursday that the state’s largest teachers union might consider a lawsuit to determine if the state can take away tenure rights of teachers.
At issue is a provision in a school funding measure signed Monday by Gov. Sam Brownback. While increasing funding for public education, the measure also reduces the due process rights of teachers if they are fired by a school district.
KNEA officials told the Lawrence Journal-World (https://bit.ly/1il5jzk ) that the only recourse might be to challenge the new law in court once a tenured teacher is fired. The KNEA considers the tenure process a right that teachers have earned after working for at least three years in a district.
“We are looking at challenges on a variety of levels, and that is one of them: whether the Legislature can, by fiat, take away an earned property right,” said Mark Disetti, the KNEA’s director of legislative and political advocacy.
Brownback signed the bill, which increases school district funding by $129 million to satisfy a March 7 state Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit filed by school districts and parents in 2010. The Republican governor said the tenure provision gives local districts room to negotiate and ends statewide mandate for how the issue is handled.
Kansas first enacted tenure laws in 1957, giving teachers who have worked in a district for three years the right to administrative process before they can be fired or denied contract renewal by a district.
Senate Vice President Jeff King said he’s not surprised about potential legal challenges. But he said he believes the state funding measure is legally justified.
King, an Independence Republican, cited a 1980 Kansas Supreme Court ruling in which the justices said tenure had a negative impact on student outcomes, suggesting that school districts were reluctant to begin the termination process because of the time involved in removing an ineffective teacher.
“In the recent Gannon decision, the Supreme Court said the most important thing in evaluating the school finance system in the state is improving student outcomes,” King said. “When the court has said student outcomes suffer because of tenure, and then issue an opinion saying the key determining factor in school finance is quality of student outcomes, I think this is a factor the Supreme Court will consider favorably.”
KNEA attorney David Schauner said litigation wasn’t likely until a teacher was fired without cause. He said the Legislature’s action might be unconstitutional.
“This notion of property and taking of property as a constitutional concept under the Fifth and 14th amendments is that you can’t take it without due process,” Schauner said. “Status is considered to be property. The Legislature cannot just wave its legislative pen and say it’s gone.”
The Kansas Association of School Boards has advised its members to be cautious in changing their employment practices because of the chance the new law could be contested in court.
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Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, https://www.ljworld.com
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