Teacher job-loss suit tried

The district’s lawyer told the jury it will be deciding whether it’s fair to hold the district responsible for the teachers’ choice to retire.

Starting in 2005, the six teachers — David and Nonalee Cornell, Laura McGlothlin, Norm Wells, Penny Shepherd and Patty Rolen, all in their early 50s — retired but continued teaching full-time. Known as “double-dipping,” it’s an option allowed under Oregon law in small counties in order to recruit qualified teachers. By February 2007, they were told they would have to reapply for their jobs and go through the interview process. All did, but only one kept her job. She resigned a year later.

They allege they made the decision to retire, at least a decade earlier than planned, based on oral promises they received from the superintendent and human resources director that they could keep their jobs as long as they liked.

The district’s attorney said Superintendent Candy Armstrong only talked to one of the six teachers. Armstrong is named personally in the lawsuit, along with the district.

The school district’s attorney, Brett Mersereau, said the human resources director, Paula Blunt, knew as a professional that she could not promise the retirees ongoing employment for as long as they liked.

TEACHER’S CASE

All the teachers say they would never have retired if they knew they faced the prospect of losing their job, their attorney, Stephen Brischetto said. All were tenured employees who could only be fired for cause.

Five of the six teachers were 30-year-plus employees, and Wells had worked 19 years. All had good records, with no disciplinary problems, Brischetto said.

He said the loss of their jobs two years later, after a district policy change, caused financial harm that will last the rest of their lives.

Each lost $300,000 to $500,000 in wages and they will receive several hundred thousand dollars less in retirement benefits over their lifetime, said Brischetto.

He contended the landscape for the retire/rehire employees all changed in mid-February 2007, when Armstrong went on a local radio show. Host Al Wynn said the district had a number of “retire/rehire” teachers, and yet the district could not get good football coaches.

Wynn likened retirement to pregnancy, saying you’re either retired or you’re not, Brischetto said.

Renewal Issue

Brischetto said that six days after being on Wynn’s program, Armstrong told the school board she was considering no longer automatically renewing the yearly contracts of the retired teachers.

The subject of football coaches came up at the meeting too, Brischetto said.

He said the retired teachers then got a letter “out of the blue” saying they wouldn’t be automatically renewed.

Five teachers met with Armstrong and Blunt to say “you broke your promise,” only to be told “we never made any promises.”

By 2008, all the teachers were out of work.In 2009, they filed the lawsuit now being tried in Wasco County Circuit Court before Judge John Wolf.

It was put on hold after the federal lawsuit was filed, and revived after the federal matter was complete.

Brischetto said two of the teachers, Wells and Cornell, were replaced by teachers who were football coaches.

Wells, who taught hands-on classes like shop and construction, testified he was replaced by a P.E. teacher with one year experience who did not have licensure in his area. He said the man became the head football coach.

Mersereau said later the new teacher that replaced Wells also had taught computers, metals and math, and got a conditional license.

Wells, the first teacher to testify, said, “If there had been one iota of mention that I could not continue teaching, the meeting would have been over,” he said of his meeting with Armstrong and Blunt. He reiterated that several times in his testimony.

District’s Defense

Mersereau said Armstrong will testify that Wells told her he wanted to work another five years to pay off his mortgage, and that she replied, “I can’t promise you that.” Wells testified that she did not say that to him.

Mersereau said depositions showed the teachers did not research their contract or school policy on retire/rehire. In a deposition of Wells that Mersereau played for the jury, Wells was asked what information he’d gathered prior to his decision to retire. Wells replied, “The information that I gathered was that I was going to make some more money.”

He said he had kids in college at the time, and “two incomes would help a lot.”

Wells testified he understood that he retained his seniority after his retire/rehire, but Mersereau referred him to statements Wells made during a deposition where Wells acknowledged he no longer had seniority.

Mersereau then asked, “did you lose seniority?” Wells said, “I guess so.”

Wells testified he was not told he would be losing tenure, and he would not have retired if he’d known.

He also said he was told the only risk to his job was layoffs, but he said the district hadn’t had layoffs in years and wasn’t at risk of them at that time.

Wells told the jury he believed “I probably could work as long as I wanted to.” Then he said, “let me rephrase that,” and said, “That I could work as long as I wanted to.”

Wells said Armstrong sent him a letter saying he would be rehired under the district policy, which she cited by its alphabetic code but did not describe. He said he did not look up the policy.

He said he believed it was “incumbent” on her to give him a copy of the policy and say, “this is what it is.”

He said, “There was no need to [check the policy]. I was told in that meeting I would continue working.”

He added, “If she had showed the board policy [and said] this will affect how we hire you back, I would’ve walked out of that meeting.” He said tenured teachers had what were called “rollover contracts” that were signed yearly. “I was just a rollover contract in my mind.”

In his retirement letter, Wells wrote that “hopefully” he was coming back for the next three years to work.

Mersereau said his use of the word “hopefully” suggested he knew it wasn’t a sure thing, but Wells said that was not his intent in using that word. He said there was “no doubt in my mind” that he would continue teaching.

POLICY ISSUES

Mercereau said District 21, whose first school year was 2004-05, quickly set a policy allowing retire/rehires to work on a year-by-year basis, establishing it was not obligated to offer continued employment to retirees.

Mersereau played snippets of video depositions from the teachers, where they say they believed they were entitled to lifelong employment based on what the human resources director told them, but that they did not think the human resources director had the authority to offer it. The depositions also showed none of the teachers reviewed the district’s retire/rehire policy, Mersereau said. “They never gathered that information before they made this decision to retire,” he said.

One teacher, Nonalee Cornell, said in a deposition it was her “hope” or her “thinking” that the school district would retain her, with health benefits, for as long as she wanted.

When she signed a two-year teaching contract in 2005, she said she believed it offered her the right to “lifetime” teaching.

The attorney then asks where the contract obligated the district to give her a job for as long as she wanted it, and she said it didn’t say it “in those words.”

In late 2006, Mersereau said, at the superintendent’s request, the district barred automatic yearly contract renewals for retire/rehire teachers, requiring them to apply for and interview for their jobs. That was done for two reasons, Mersereau said: first, once a teacher works for three years, they gain tenure.

“The school district was afraid of that possibility,” he said.

But most importantly, he said, “The school district wanted to be sure they had the best possible teachers in their classrooms...They wanted to see who was out there.”

In February 2007, 10 retire/rehire teachers were given a letter telling them they’d have to apply for, and interview for, their jobs in order to return to the classroom.

Though five of the six teachers bringing the lawsuit didn’t get rehired in that process, almost all of them later returned to work for the district, either as substitute teachers, as coaches — which Dave Cornell continues to do — or as teachers, Brischetto said.

Wells had a part-time job with the district until earlier this month, when he quit because its terms changed.