Teacher files appeal after district votes to nonrenew contract

A district proposed the nonrenewal of a teacher’s term contract. The teacher requested a hearing before the district's board of trustees. After the hearing, the board voted to nonrenew the teacher’s contract and the teacher appealed to the commissioner of education.

On appeal, the teacher argued that the reason for the proposed nonrenewal was “a program change that was necessitated by the ending of grant funding.”

Because the end of the grant required the elimination of a program, as opposed to one specific position, the teacher argued that the district was required to use the procedures related to a reduction in force (RIF) in order to nonrenew the contract and that, since it failed to follow those procedures, the nonrenewal should be overturned. 

The district argued that its policies allowed it to nonrenew a teacher’s contract for “any reason specified in the employee’s employment contract.”

The teacher’s contract read, in part, as follows:

“The district agrees to employ the teacher, a dean of discipline (grant funded) . . . . If your position is funded by grants, federal funding, or other special funding, you understand that your employment is expressly conditioned on the availability of full funding for the position. If full funding becomes unavailable, your employment is subject to termination or nonrenewal, as applicable.”

The commissioner of education concluded that, according to the teacher’s contract, when full funding under a grant is unavailable, the contract is subject to nonrenewal. The teacher’s position, according to the contract, is a grant-funded position, and the grant that funded the position ran out. The reason for the proposed nonrenewal, “program change necessitated by ending of grant funding,” applied to the end of grant funding. 

Therefore, the district was not required to use the procedures related to a reduction in force in order to nonrenew the contract. The commissioner upheld the district's decision to nonrenew the teacher’s contract.