Court rules school district did not follow law requiring teacher be observed teaching three times before firing.

Court rules school district did not follow law requiring teacher be observed teaching three times before firing.

Before a school board decides not to renew a public school teacher’s contract, state law requires the teacher to be observed teaching three times. A Kent school teacher was wrongly terminated after only two observations, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.

The Supreme Court found the Kent City School District Board of Education did not follow the law when it did not renew the contract of 20-year employee Shawn Jones in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the school district argued that observing a virtual class of sixth graders discussing assignments given to them by Jones but without Jones present constituted a third observation.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice Jennifer Brunner explained that the district used an observation model developed by the state board of education, which allowed the observation of a “class period” or “class lesson.” However, the district was bound to follow the law, not suggestions from the state board or any methods agreed upon by the district and the local teachers’ union, she wrote.

“Our holding that the statutes at issue here require actual observation of the teacher teaching is nothing new,” Justice Brunner stated, citing a 1994 Supreme Court decision.

The decision affirmed an Eleventh District Court of Appeals decision requiring the district to reinstate Jones.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices R. Patrick DeWine, Michael P. Donnelly, Melody Stewart, and Joseph T. Deters joined the opinion. Justice Patrick F. Fischer dissented and would have dismissed the case as having been improvidently accepted.

School Concerned With Teacher Leaving Early  
Starting in the fall of 2019, Jones taught communications technology at Stanton Middle School. For the 2019-2020 school year, he was offered a one-year “limited contract.” Public schools can provide teachers with limited contacts for up to five years, and under a limited contract, a teacher is presumed to be reemployed for another term at the end of the existing contract. A teacher’s limited contract can be nonrenewed only if the school board follows the evaluation procedures in R.C. 3319.111 and the school superintendent recommends in writing to the school board not to renew the teacher’s contract.

At the beginning of the school year in October 2019, Jones was placed on a three-day unpaid suspension for leaving the building before the end of the school day on six days without notifying the administration and for failing to fulfill his duties on days when teachers were released early or did not need to report to class. Jones admitted he often left the building at 2:40 p.m. when students were released, even though teachers were required to stay until 2:45 p.m.

On a Monday morning in January 2020, he did not appear for work and did not appropriately notify his administrators of his absence. Jones later explained he was sick on Sunday and attempted to go into the automated system to request the day off and secure a substitute teacher. He thought the arrangement was approved when a substitute teacher notified Jones through the system that the teacher would pick up his class. Only later did Jones realize that he accidentally scheduled the following Monday off and that no one was scheduled to teach his class.

An assistant superintendent notified Jones that his contract might not be renewed because he missed the Monday class. The notification stated he would be placed on a “full cycle of OTES evaluation.” OTES refers to the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System, a model process developed by the Ohio Department of Education.

The school board and the Kent teachers’ union have a collective bargaining agreement, and the agreement established a committee to develop specific procedures for teacher evaluations. The board and union agreed to use the OTES model for evaluations.

Pandemic Influenced Observations
R.C. 3319.11(E) states that a board must conduct “at least three formal observations of each teacher who is under consideration for nonrenewal” of a limited contract. The first observation of Jones occurred in late January 2020 when an evaluator attended Jones’ sixth-grade communications technology class.

Jones met with the evaluator both before and after the observation and received the evaluator’s feedback. Before a second observation, the General Assembly recognized the difficulties schools were having in transitioning from in-person to remote learning. The law allowed schools to skip teacher evaluations if completing them was impracticable or impossible. However, a board electing to forgo evaluations was required to reemploy those teachers who were not evaluated.

Kent opted not to skip the evaluation of Jones. The board and the teachers’ union agreed that teacher observations could be completed virtually. The agreement specified that the evaluator must submit a written evaluation by May 22, near the end of the school year. The agreement did not alter the requirement that if the board decided not to renew Jones’ contract, he needed to receive that notice in writing by June 1.

Jones’ second evaluation occurred in May. Jones recorded an online class session he conducted with students, and the evaluator observed the session. A third observation was scheduled for May 11. Jones woke up that morning with chest pains and went to the hospital. His doctor then issued Jones a medical excuse from work until June 1.

The evaluator attended a remote learning session Jones had scheduled for May 15. The session was attended by Jones’ students, who discussed among themselves their progress on a project assigned by Jones. However, Jones was not present during the session.

Four days later, and before the deadline for the evaluator to submit the final report, the superintendent recommended to the board that it not renew Jones’ contract. The board approved the recommendation and sent Jones a letter on May 20 notifying him of its decision.

On May 22, the evaluator reported Jones achieved the overall highest rating of “Accomplished.”

Teacher Contested Job Elimination
Jones contested the decision to not renew his contract, and the board voted to affirm its decision. Under R.C. 3319.11(G)(7), Jones appealed the decision to the Portage County Common Pleas Court, arguing the board failed to complete the process required by state law to not renew his contract.

The common pleas court affirmed the board’s decision, and Jones appealed to the Eleventh District. The appeals court reversed the trial court’s decision. The school board appealed the Eleventh District ruling to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

Supreme Court Analyzed Teacher Evaluation Law
Justice Brunner explained that when a teacher appeals a nonrenewal decision, the reviewing courts are limited by state law to only determining procedural errors made by the board. Because of the limit, the Supreme Court can only examine whether the board complied with state law and cannot decide whether the reasons behind the board’s decision were legitimate, the opinion stated.

The board argued that the union contract controlled the issue, but the Court’s opinion noted that R.C. 3319.11 indicates the laws on teacher evaluations “prevail over any conflicting provisions of a collective bargaining agreement.”

The opinion noted the key provision of R.C. 3319.111(E) is that a “board shall require at least three formal observations of each teacher who is under consideration for nonrenewal.” Jones argued the third observation did not comply with the law because he was not present at the virtual session where the evaluator observed the students discussing the assignment he gave them.

The board noted that the OTES model, which the board and teachers’ union agreed to follow, allowed for a formal observation to be a “visitation of a class period or viewing of a class lesson.” The board maintained that the evaluator did view a class lesson to complete the third evaluation.

The language of the statutes sets the requirements, regardless of what the parties may have agreed to through the adoption of a model for evaluations and observations, the opinion explained. The law requires the observation of the teacher who is under consideration for nonrenewal, the Court noted.

The Court stated there is no exception in the law, and when the evaluator observed the students on May 15, she did not observe Jones. The opinion cited the Court’s 1994 Farmer v. Kellys Island Bd. of Education decision, which involved a prior version of the teacher observation law. In that case, the Court stated that “when a teacher evaluation requires ‘observation of the teacher,’ it requires just that.”

The Court, in today’s opinion, stated it was mindful that Jones was medically excused from May 11 through June 1, and it was not possible for the board to observe him and make a decision by the June 1 deadline.

“We also recognize the unique challenges and uncertainties that schools faced in spring 2020 as a result of the transition from in-person to remote learning occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. But we are bound to apply the unambiguous language of R.C. 3319.111(E),” the Court concluded.

The Court remanded the case to the common pleas court to conduct further proceedings, including calculating back pay owed to Jones.

2023-0376. Jones v. Kent City School Dist. Bd. of Edn., Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-2844.

View oral argument video of this case.

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