Opinion ID: 1355702
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: extra-duty coaching assignment

Text: We now must address the second issue whether a school board may make its statutory duty to fix teacher's duties subject to binding arbitration. With regard to the arbitrability of the Board's decision to discontinue Terry's extra-duty coaching assignment appellees assert the Court of Appeals' decision ordering the grant of mandamus is contrary to Oklahoma statute under 70 O.S.Supp. 1983 § 5-117(A)15 which gives specific authority to local boards of education to fix the duties of teachers. In Maupin v. Independent School Dist., 632 P.2d 396 (Okla. 1981), we held a tenured teacher reinstated to only his primary teaching position after nonrenewal of employment, had no statutory right to be reinstated to his extra-duty coaching assignment. We concluded a local board of education may assign teachers within the school system as they desire, subject to the statutory boundaries. We observed: A teacher may be an excellent teacher, but a poor glee club director, coach, or 4-H club advisor. Neither the school system nor the student should suffer from possible shortcomings in the extracurricular areas when the teacher's talents can be more suitably directed in another area. Nor should a fine academician suffer because he/she is poorly suited to certain extracurricular assignments. Id. at 399. Section 5-117(A)15 explicitly confers upon school boards the function of fixing teacher duties. We hence find a school board has the plenary power to discontinue the extra-duty assignments of a tenured teacher. Such power is essentially managerial in nature and not bargainable. The substantive decision to assign or not assign teachers' duties is basically a policy determination. To find otherwise would significantly interfere with the board's inherent managerial responsibility for the local educational policies and duty to maintain adequate standards for the benefit of the pupils and the school district. [16] Assignment of teachers' duties go to the most essential part of the educational process. To inject the element of just cause into the Board's managerial prerogative to not retain Terry in his extra-duty assignment as coach is repugnant to the statutory policy implicit in § 5-117(A)15 and significantly impinges upon the Board's ability to make substantive policy determinations. [17] We conclude it was beyond the power of the Board to bind itself to arbitration through collective bargaining which would have the effect of superseding its nondelegable and exclusive authority to fix teachers' duties, in the absence of any legislation to the contrary. [18]