or b is clearly erroneous as a matter of law and should be reversed for the following five reasons first that the holding in this court in the board of education of harrisburg community school district was misconstrued by the i o or b and the arbitrator second the bargaining history of the parties clearly show that no standard of just before the board of education what the procedures would be written notice of the reasons and the opportunity to be represented by a  representative those were procedural votes substance and it was this person though that will employ we believe that employee was an at will employee under the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement those employees were at will with third reason is that the arbitrator by construing paragraph six point two to include a formal due process for signatures and a standard for both the arbitrator and the i p l or b and the fifth and final reason would be that by what ever name of the arbitrator  standard of dismissal the way it was applied is essentially just cause for provision that is fit and ready into the collective bargaining agreement this is a result the union knocking at the bargaining table but attempted again through arbitration to a library a bit more with regard to the reasons  we believe that bat already should be followed in this case and that began actions of the group's bill perry board of education were consistent with the whole thing in the harrisburg case the bargaining history of this contract clearly shows that the union attempted to propose or did propose a progressive discipline which basically would have a stamp wish and against the manifest weight standard of the evidence and would not allow the arbitrator to have any discretion other than to determine whether or and that was that the employee if they were going to appear before the board of education would prior to written notice of the reasons and would could be and her union representative to see her personnel f complied with the union would not accept that the proposal was to mutually withdraw both all of those proposals for regard to that and some of the other provisions in the bar in the that had been posed at that point in the bar so the union decided not to pursue the hard bargaining that was on that particular subject  what we're left with this is no standard and the default in illinois that employment is fine will act will point and there was no standard for arbitrators arbitrators power i the arbitrator by including in his proposal wife think our award a list of maybe five or six different kinds of due process for seizures those are all the sort of thing i would expect to be involved in if i was involved in a just cause dismissal or a teacher tenure clearly the limited there is a limited scope of review we have never disputed that but only courts have been very clear that if there if the award is clearly  erroneous as a matter of law it can be an arbitrator's decision can be reversed and it is extremely important the fact there be with in this arbitration system ah the ability to have back review because i believe this case hips and an excellent example of what i consider to be an abuse of the system the reinterpreted i his award and came in the same position and if there isn't an opportunity to review that what we have and what this case shows is arbitrators who will at will have the authority to be able to just distinguish appellate court decisions and if the standard or review is so high that it's not possible to would stack and in various cases we've got a system that's fundamentally flawed iraq and in this case there was a remand to revise the case or his opinion in light of harrisburg he comes out to the same position when in fact this court in harrisburg was not consistent with a just cause type of remedy so we feel very strongly that it's important to be able to serve the  ability of a review to arbitrators decisions that make sense because otherwise what we negotiated act the table what we believed in what i believe the record shows we were to get the our to allow the arbitrator to come in and rewrite the agreement to something totally different undermines the entire idea of isn't any so there isn't any only distinction in the class to which this individual belongs is that she's not certified correct so she can work for the district for five years ten years fifteen years twenty years it would matt correct and if the union had wanted to bargain with us and i think this is important we they propose progressive this we those proposals so we're left with what we with what we have in the many subsequent successor remans that are negotiated nothing has been changed with regard to this provision if  be the progressive discipline and meet with that have nearly what needed to be done with the certified employed if the school district was seeking to know that necessarily because with a certified employee of certified teacher the provisions of twenty twenty four twelve of the school code are set for what the procedures are very close progressive  necessarily your own not necessarily progressive discipline depending on the nature of the nature of the a family that's it really is a question of whether the conduct is remedial or irremediable i mean i collective bargaining agreement well the arbitrator has certainly amended by identifying the additional seadrill of steps by including on the  smells lie it just cause rows even though it's been given a different name you have any other questions of the why's aren't thank you harrisburg is that this court remained it on the specific issue of the just cause remedy but this court in essence embrace the arbitrators ability to give a bribe versus a narrow meaning to the contracts term all those years yes but only the words due process and there was an argument in that case between the parties about whether or not due process should be given a limited or an expansive me specifically the school district had argued that you process should mean only what the constitution requires whereas the union had require that you process can require things above and beyond what the constitution will typically do process requires prior no notice before the hearing  brace in the harrisburg decision of the idea that the parties bargain or the judgment of the arbitrator and that arbitrator is not required to give contractual language the most limited or narrowest meaning wireman that's insider trader has bro authority as long as it's tied to the essence of the question bargaining agreement to give terms a broader american structure and that's what you're lifting of us since the agreement you also look at bargaining history yes bargaining history is relevant to the essence of the agree they bargained about that came to no resolution as to the specifics that would be included and instead of just said well we'll live with this you could appear before the school board and you can bring a representative  i have to two things i'd like to say about that the first is that if the union settled on two point six as a compromise their reading that the school district have said has given section two point six is narrower and many respects than the protection that the union would have gotten under the school board's initial proposal and if you recall in the bargaining history the school board's proposal risk from rejected as powerful because it was you just stripping away many rights that the union thought its employees are it's just so the union and read a section two point six as a compromise or a middle ground between the extremes it would be odd to give it a reading that provides the employees in that sense with the window dressing hearing with no other protections they would have gotten more they made it more like even more stringent than what was proposed in essence yes i mean there's a theory of the bargaining history is that the union ended up agreeing to something that provided substantially l formal hearing but the school board can do whatever they want to do it you know that here and there are really no that was that's that's odd but that's the way it is and i believe that bad ideas consistent with if if you look at the text of the a minute arbitration award there requirement the only requirement there that is arguably substantive is the fourth requirement basically that it cannot be an entirely irrational or arbitrary decision the other three requirements are purely procedural about the specificity of the evidence and if only to raise it that's so there's nothing in the arbitrators amended award that requires just cause that you know the idea of just cause certainly there are procedural eyewitness to just cause but an important aspect of just posit that there is a certain class or certain threshold of misconduct for which terminations is not appropriate  the mean due process isn't in a contract that's true but there are just calls it isn't in the the decision by name but we're supposed to understand what these terms mean these decisions bude with the backdrop of those well i think what would be helpful there is perhaps looking at each of the each of the romney aspects that arbitrator required if you if you look at the amended arbitration award there is in essence for procedures that are required and i can show you how each of those procedures can be tied back to the language of section two point six is it i'm sensing concern here that the that because there is not a due process language here that the section two point six does not require any procedures whatsoever but i think that there there's a good case to be made that each of the procedures that are required can be tied back to the language section so when you said that the arbitrators and it seems like it's a good time to address this directly so the first one is a requirement of a statement of the specific acts or missions and that's tied to the requirement in section two point six that there's reasonable  the term reasonable is not self defining if the parties include a language like reasonable any agreement there is necessarily going to be some interpretation about what reasonable written notice means by her betrayal you can't say  essence of section two point six there is a requirement of reasonable written statements and the arbitrator decided that reasonable in this in that context it's a specificity that if you look at the state is mr pettigrew says that the individual can be destroyed the news so why do you have to specify some reason well section two point six says the staff member shall be given a reasonable prayer written board was going to determine if that was the reason they will ever meet well under his interpretation of section two point six it's in essence an empty formality and you would wonder why i did this but l well i was i also pointed out that there was reasonable prayer written this of the reasons that's right in the contract one would think regardless of whether there's a substantive component to it there is a clear textural requirement the contract to give reasonable pri written notice of the reasons for that meeting she didn't know why they were having a meeting scuse me again as i didn't know why they were him meeting their traitor found that there had been relatively ok an unsubstantiated claims that she didn't smile and often did not have a good or her union representatives got again the parties have contracted for the judgment of the arbitrator and it's black letter law and review of arbitration agreements that the fact that someone might give a different interpretation of a word is not a sufficient reason for their remit that's the finding should be subjected to a class severe sanctions that terminations so for example under the arbitrator's decision if they had provided specific evidence of report in the area and specific evidence of her inability to relate to students that would have been sufficient reason to terminate her in under the arbitrators award if they go back and decide terminate misfires after a second hearing as long as it complies with the specificity requirement there then that would be a reason to terminate her the second time so there's nothing in the arbitrator's decision that prevents her from being terminated as long as it complies with you know the requirements in the amended award whereas in harrisburg the idea was not only that school district had to provide all of the requirements a few process but it also had to show just cause on top of all of those requirements of the process meaning that there are some things such as using  words or not using you're not giving the junior varsity team enough time to practice those things and it on themselves could never justify germination even if they were clearly shown by a preponderance of the evidence or with it's not the idea that budgetary reasons can ever justify the dismissal of an employee just as it seemed to be the idea of the arbitrator in harrisburg that the fact that you didn't use the junior varsity team and off that's not a reason to take away someone's travel if you can mystery misconduct is not required that that is correct but again you still have to comply with section two point six of the c p a and i've already shown that the first and the second requirement and the amended arbitration award are directly t the language of the c v a the phrase given recent more prior written notice of the reasons of such meet ups so for example using justice cook your budget example presumably the requirement there would be some specificity about the budget requirements of the district as well as you know why terminations of this position would result in the reduction of the district's budget so these first two requirements and the amended arbitration award really just go to providing an adequate notice of the reasons that you're giving really to give the employee an opportunity to rebut them and to bring evidence in their own defense and that ties in directly with the second aspect of section two point six which is that you shall be entitled to have a personal representative at said meeting that i betrayed or found that hard and personal having a representative is the opportunity to make some sort of argument or raise your own defense if you want to give this a narrow view under the school district's view it's not even clear if an employee would have the right to say anything at the hearing they simply would have a union representative with them so the of section two point six why would you have the requirement of a personal representative if you don't also at least have some ability to raise evidence when you're on the fence in those first two requirements also tied in with that because it's very difficult to raise a their son limitation on the arbitrariness sessions but this is really tied in with the first three procedural questions if the district had given her specific a statement in specific acts or missions and given her all of the other relevant information and given her the opportunity to confront the district seven senators that is and that's the ultimate decision would not have appeared arbitrary so i think that the folks i can understand strategically why they want to focus on the substance of component arbitrator's decision but it really is just saying if you make a decision based on no evidence and don't give the other party an opportunity to rebut it then that decision is in essence arbitrary and so if the district take complying with the procedural aspects of the decision it's highly unlikely that the decision would have been found substantively arbitrary because the reason that it was arbitrary is it just seemed to be based on no facts and it seemed to be based on things that employ couldn't possibly rebut how do you show that you don't smile how do you show that you don't have a bad demeanor if there's no specific discussions about when you didn't smile enough or the consequences of having bad student plates teacher points soft so forth so i think that the substantive aspect of this case is very limited it's barack traders main concern here was that the evidence that was supplied was so vague and so difficult to rebut dead that guarantees in section two point six could not be provided before the meeting in march so he thinks she has a right to all these things before they make up their minds no question about because that you know that is amazing to me that the school board is thinking about this charging employee they charges after and they don't go around filing charges before they've made a determination that the charges are justified your honor the material that the principal shared in executive with the school board in february was from her notebook which was not part of the grievance personnel file that is what she shared in executive s filed a grievance that is before the march meeting contesting the actions taken by the school then the superintendent conveyed shortly before the march meeting this material from the principals notebook those documents that information these allegations were never placed in the individual's personnel f hardly anything in the grievance personnel file that's negative remember this person worked for over ten years at the school book district continuously and the evidence  showed that non certified person of ten used an employee from year to year unless they were notified of discharge and this was the first situation for the head kurds and the first collective bargaining personnel in the case of budgetary restraints and whole other section of the collective bargaining agreement thank you your time's expired to the personnel file argument i believe is is a red herring first of all the personnel only personal review act provides by its own provisions section four that materials that are not in the personnel file can be used if they are produced in a reasonable time for review of the information prior to the proceeding or discharge or discipline in this case the there was a letter that was sent by the  d on i believe it was march fourth there was a letter and i believe that meeting was with the superintendent and one hires in the union meeting well in fact that was on march third car driven transfer page one thirty three on it and it was at that meeting that these notes from the it's mine with regard to personnel decisions that are going to have to be acted on in march so which raised with regard to our hires on there was  away but she did subsequently right after that shirley after that meeting then there was a letter that went to her it set forth what the procedure you know what the  forward with this matter but the board didn't vote until this meeting on the nineteenth ok another point that was brought up in oral argument and this is one of those things that scada have agreements and binding arbitration was we're stuck with that i can't go to the table and bargain out of that provision that's against the law so that is why it's extremely important to be able to have some review if i could bargain that at the table by that be a different that be a different story then i would be subject to that  also the the bargaining history i mean why the union did what it did in terms of withdrawing opposing it we mutually withdraw those procedures