Laid-off teachers going to court

Five teachers laid off by the Wheatland School District want a court order for their reinstatement, contending the school district eliminated the jobs of teachers with seniority and kept newer instructors.

School district trustees also abused their discretion when rejecting the proposed decision of a state administrative law judge who presided at the May 14-15 hearings in Wheatland for teachers challenging the layoffs, the legal filing Fr day in Yuba County Superior Court contends.

But Paul Nicholas Boylan, attorney for the school district, said Wheatland followed the law in the layoffs that came as the school district confronted the budget cutbacks California schools face.

"The district reluctantly laid off senior teachers," Boylan said, "because those senior teachers did not have the same qualifications as the more junior teachers."

Providing equal access to public education required keeping newer teachers with Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development certificates to teach English language learner students, the school district contends.

Moreover, state law does not require school districts to follow the findings of administrative law judges who are assigned by the state to hear matters related to public employment, Boylan said.

"We've been cut to the bone," he said of the Wheatland school district. Now the California Teachers Association wants the jobs of the instructors reinstated, Boylan said. "We have no positions for them," he said.

Requiring Wheatland to hire the teachers would represent an "enormous and crippling economic blow," Boylan said.

Attorney Carolyn Langenkamp, representing the five teachers, could not be reached for comment Monday.

The filing on behalf of the teachers recounts administrative law judge Karl Engeman noting about 12 percent of students are English language learners and that not all classes require teachers with such certificates.

"Neither the testimony of district administrators — nor any other evidence," the administrative law judge stated, established that senior teachers without a Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development certificate would be required to provide instruction to English language learners.

While the Wheatland School District argued that constitutional equal protection issues require keeping newer teachers who hold the cross cultural credentials, Engeman continued, about 75 percent of teachers will have such credentials so English language learners will be accommodated.

The request for the court order to reinstate the teachers was filed on behalf of instructors M.J. Bolin, Steve Christensen, Jennifer Shue, Kathleen Sisk and Adelle Wapple.

Christensen began working for the Wheatland school district in 1983, Sisk in 1989, Bolin in 1993, Wapple in 1994 and Shue in 2002, according to the decision by the administrative law judge.

Lucy Barnett, whose children had attended the Lone Tree School in the Wheatland district, described the five instructors as "all wonderful teachers."

"They pink slipped the oldest teachers," Barnett said of the school district.

Attorney Boylan said the quality of the teachers wasn't at issue but whether they held cross-cultural credentials.

He cited state deadlines to inform teachers they may not be working the following school year and noted Wheatland issued layoff notices to younger as well as older instructors.

"School districts are in a legal straitjacket when it comes to layoffs," Boylan said.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com.