the last case on for argument today is williams versus the government school district are buffalo public schools educator who was contracted by buffalo education board to perform a two year service which was considered a failing school district my background includes extensive experience working in urban districts with great difficulties from which i was specifically recruited and hired for the position of chief a curriculum assessment and instruction for which i managed a team of forty individuals and multiple departments as well as i had additional duties that i assumed over the period of  that job description was not attached to an incorporated in the contract in the court focused on the absence of an explicit reference to the qualifications and certifications that  morrison needed to have i had a little confusion about the exhibit piece in the new york case was did your contract include an exhibit b that did include the job description or certainly that's ok so in the summary order referencing particular pages five and six where it may be possible and if for that the defendant waive the agreement requirements of the new york certification and at least at the time of the proceeding so at the time when i came to the buffalo public schools i held in oklahoma and florida a sort of certification for administrative certificate and i was hired anyway and waived the certification and that  uncommon practice and because i was the best qualified candidate now withstanding the any of the new york state certificates i was at which i fully disclosed to the superintendent the board and everybody else who was involved in hiring process day i was hired in completed the state certification process received a letter from the district's h r department that told me that i had met the requirements i'm sorry oh you're racing against the clock when you and just more of the last people so with that particular certification but i did complete the state certification process and received a letter from the district's h r department that i had met the requirements back in for that sort of occasion in december of two thousand and thirteen with the school leader certification and proceeded with my ministry to duties as hired and then however the contract was eventually ratified by the board along the way however the superintendent and mr brown who was the director of the talent management advised me and my colleague dr morrison to obtain additional certifications knowing that i had the proper qualifications which was publicly stated and it was simply a matter of securing documentations to their liking so along with  and were up taint and then were considered to be in compliance then the board at some point decided to after i had secured the last request a certification from the state department of read what during within the time you were to have done that say that again sir you should cure them within the time that you were instructed yes yes i just want to make sure so after i had secured those certifications again from the state department and the board voted eight zero to terminate me on the second ups of april about two thousand and fourteen and these actions have placed my professional career record in jeopardy and in limbo your honest this is a case of being fair there was despair legal pardoning power the contract itself was negotiated from the standpoint of the board having multiple in house counsel and i retain law firm came in from out of this state not being familiar with the new york certification process and relied upon them to guide me like is only a decision that we were able to find during the research was that their opinion of the new york state education commissioner himself or herself who found that the intern certification was an equivalent regular district leader certificate which i did procure from the state department of ed so my argument at least in challenging the dismissal of the case is that the state department of the that gave me the district wide supervisory internship certificate that i complied with the contract and for that i'm saying that it should not have been the snus and that is basically my position and all of that information was before the district court yes in addition to other case importing law  occasions we got written documentation that we had met those compliances and then to just be told arbitrarily that we you paid directly to do it we get it and then they said oh no that's ok we're going to hire you anyway and then we got no compensation this court had what looks to me to be exactly the same case involving there were two people who in the press and in the action taken by the board seem to have been treated pretty much the same way  they were represented at least at one time i'm not sure why ms williams is pro se now but they were represented by the same lawyer they filed the cookie cutter complaints they file cookie cutter briefs that are similar and a panel of this court decided the other case and said there are issues of fact about breach of contract so is this one different or you're just arguing well that was a summary order so we can go down the memory hole and we can decide difference in the contracts and then in the marcin case it seemed that there was a blank exhibit b here i was unclear about whether the job description was in fact part of the contract and stapled to it or not  williams williams says that it was not part of the contract it was part of the application process and wasn't a physical part of the contract can pick you confirm that or do you disagree to the best of my knowledge it was not physically attached it's just a you i'm sorry that the question is is there some relevant distinction including that possible one which if that isn't a distinction is there anything different about these two cases so the only difference is one there's a defamation claim in mr williams is obviously highly capable highly educated and capable of reading and understanding the contents of a contract and to that extent contrary to miss williams position i would say you think the prior panel thought that dr morrison who i think also had dance degrees was not capable really know what i'm suggesting your honor is that you actually can see ms williams here where she didn't have the benefit or the panel didn't have the benefit of having  highly intelligent highly capable highly educated individuals capable of negotiating a contract and to the extent there's been a narrative where there's a big and bad district if you will  represented by me and my three colleagues as opposed to one of the doctors i suggest to you i submit to you that there was not a disparity of ability to negotiate under the cer knew the facts in each case the district hasn't taken the position that there was any dissembling or that they were advised that the certificate that was referenced in the job application was possessed by dr morrison or dr williams right you know so the district was aware hired dr williams and proceeded to compensate her and she participated and she followed the district's directions to obtain various other certificate in the meantime and that is correct your honor the distinction i want to draw on and what's going to ensure that morrison case was one district employees including actually myself were often encouraged to go out and get various training so to the extent that dr morrison fused me dr williams obtained other types of training those also but trust her position as he was getting certificates she was doing yes programs to get certificates that she had been advised to she alleges that we needed her to have and that was bargained for as part of the contract that's the distinction i would make simply because you've you've sought training or you've been assigned to do training here here and here does not necessarily mean that it satisfies the core training that was labor provision in the contract nonetheless we have a course of dealing here over a period of months and individua from florida who came to buffalo when reliance on the offer made by the city was retained and work for is the term a nation of agreement by operation of law one of the written agreement portion of one of the non waiver clause which you just mentioned the terminations of agreement by operation of  law reads as follows if the chief of curriculum assessment and struction fails to maintain any certifications or qualifications required for this position i e qualifications are required by the department civil service or state education department then this agreement shell immediately become aware of that and i just reference but i'm asking you why should we treat the course of conduct notwithstanding this i mean that the district is also in that good position to negotiate and to know the terms of the contract signed but is still acting inconsistently with those terms well your honor i would suggest to you that is not acting inconsistently and i would say in addition to the language that i just specify when you read that in light of the entire contract particularly the no waiver clause what it allows the district to do is hire a qualified candidate like miss williams who does not have a record with certifications but we reckon that she brings some great things to the table we do in that case as we say all right you come and you get the state required certifications in order to meet the state qualifications and then you get to work on those things that we know that you have a excellent background or seem to have a good capability of doing but with the no waiver clause says even if we wait a year and in fact there's case law out there you know if there's a cake there's a case out there where a company didn't force the waiver clause or the waiver clause for twenty years but in our case we're looking at eight months what we're saying is won't give you some time to get up to par with the certifications and yet at some point if we so choose we have the option of enforcing these clauses in this case that's what we did we she had eight months in excess of eight months to make that explicit to her i mean does the record so when he made that explicit you know we were high you would recognize you don't have the certifications needed but we're going to work with you and see what happens your honor the record does not show terms of time it is about two months and we argued in front of you about two months ago so it's it's not too far down the track of time the other end of the summer right i understand yeah ok so the what i what i want to ask about the also i guess toward the question i had i apologize the question i had was well if even if a person is working on her certification wouldn't you agree that the school district couldn't pull the plug on her she's in the middle of the well because it's said come on and we'll let you work what we're going to we're going to waive this we've got there's no waiver important to have qualified individuals we could miss out on an exceptional candidate if we did not bring that candidate in while he or she were available and then try and make some provisions in order for he or she or she to get caught with state certification and requirements and so here we don't specify we don't come in and we say you have one year to do it circumstances may be such that it can be done in six months circumstances may be such that it could be done in two years and so we don't specify the time but the expectation at least for the application going in is you sign this contract you bargain for these particular terms one of which is to have this certificate you don't have that you understand you don't have that so it's important for you to get on and i think what's also meant there was there any is there any indication in this record the folks who hired dr williams said to her you understand that you have this qualification we're letting you start without it but you have to make adequate progress towards this so we will terminate your employment well your honor the application for the job specified the need for the certificate and you want i'm saying is you know you are saying and it seems to me a perfectly reasonable proposition in the abstract that somebody can be hired without a certification and then there's supposed to make progress to get it because as you say you need to be able to hire people provisionally without that and then everybody works together to make sure the person gets it and if they screw up or turn out not to be able to or not to be interested in doing it then you can pull the plug but that doesn't sound like this case and then i'm mistaken to believe that dr williams negotiated with one group of people and then there's a political change and they go out and the new people say the old regime hired unqualified people we don't want them anymore is that not what happened here i would argue that that's not what happened and so first of all is it objectively the case that what happened here was that the people who negotiated with dr williams and hired her are different than the people who pulled the plug no your honor and let me clarify what i mean by that some of the individuals who hired and interview dr williams still currently are leadership with the district however the superintendent alternately made the call to hire there is a newer and somebody superintendent now and i believe there's actually been superintendent since that superintendent in addition the former board member who specific allegations were brought regarding the defamation claim he is no longer a member of the board so some of the board dynamics have changed but some of the leadership including some of that interview dr williams are still leadership with the district and did anyone ever say to dr williams according to the record reflects you know you're supposed to be working on the certificate and we don't see you making any progress or anything like that you wanted to the best i'm up to the best of my personal way through the contract already so when the inquiry is raised how much time should you give an individual did anyone say to her even at the time that she was terminated the reason you were being terminated is because in the last eight months to specify that it is not the it is not be job at think or anything to do with that or it should not negatively reflect upon dr williams or dr morrison the reason they were terminated for the contract claim if you should take the same position did morrison and send it back down to the court we'd like to consider that the board itself the district was the individual that hired dr williams as was the case with d and she however has sued the individual board members as well they were not and contract with her as a result at least we're arguing that they should certainly be dismissed individually with regard to the breach of contract the lower court also granted summary judgment that summary judgment motion to dismiss with regard to that cause of action and the logic behind that was that there wasn't a false statement because there was a breach of particularities that should be associated with a defamation claim and so i'd like to renew that argument specifically point out that it was proper to dismiss the defamation climb and that if you look at the different language that  specified in the complaint rarely ever do you get a time in place and also if you have to go through hurdles of hurdles upon hurdles to draw the conclusions that the point of has in this case it does not necessarily directly reference her and i realize i'm speaking with regard to several statements right now but it doesn't recognize her all the time other times a point of specifically says that they're half truth me obviously that at the very least perk her concession they're partially true and so that's not the proper that you follow the same course of action with that as well thank you mr moore is williams i know you didn't ask for a bottle just more quite a few minutes up there is there anything else you want to tell us at this point  the only thing i like to add is that there was not a lag in my pursuit of the certification upon hire i did the online process as it is done commonly through all employees with the state department of ed it was then completed and the district acknowledged receipt of that city if it kit and sent me a letter saying that i had received that that i had met compliance within the respect of the position so i continued to work it became a knowledge to myself and to dr morrison later in the spring of two thousand and fourteen that well was acknowledged as compliant was no longer set and that we then had to pursue an additional certificate not knowing the difference of a school level district level or other we would just apply to the stay and that's what they stern returned back to us and then it was acknowledge by the district that it meant compliance for the job responsibilities that out was performing that piece of information and i want to apologize to you personally i've been calling you ms williams and i should have been calling you dr williams but is that piece of