Court Opinion

ID: 9665601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:52:33.064026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:16.536017
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing
LAWSON, Justice.
On application for rehearing appellee has called to our attention an act of the 1951 legislature amending § 352, Title 52, Code 1940, which act became effective upon its approval by the Governor on September 11, 1951. Gen. Acts 1951, Vol. 2, p. 1408; § 352, Code 1940, as amended, 1951 Pocket Part, Vol. 8, p. 28. This act was not brought to our attention on original submission. As amended, § 352, Title 52, Code 1940, is made to read:
“Any teacher in the public schools, who shall meet the following requirements, shall attain continuing service status: (a) Such teacher shall have served under contract as a teacher in the same county or city school system for three consecutive school years and shall thereafter be re-employed in such county or city school system the succeeding school year. An instructor who has attained continuing service status and who is promoted to principal or supervisor shall serve for three consecutive school years as a principal or- supervisor before attaining continuing service status as a principal or supervisor. Such promotion shall in nowise jeopardize the continuing service status of the teacher as an instructor; and, should the promoted instructor not be retained as principal or supervisor, his salary would be reduced to the salary paid instructors in accordance with the prevailing salary schedule in the county or city school system.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The conclusion we reached in our original opinion was based in the main on the construction we placed on the Teacher Tenure Law, unaware of the 1951 amendment, supra, to the effect that it does not give any rank or preference to teachers; that instructors, principals and supervisors are included within the term “teacher”; that they are on a common level without distinction or precedence under our statute.
Appellee was reduced from principal to “assistant teaching principal” in June of 1951, which was prior to the effective date of the amendatory act of 1951, supra, but counsel for appellee in brief here 'filed in support of application for rehearing argue that it shows a legislative interpretation of tHe teacher tenure law which i* in conflict with the construction which we placed thereon in our original opinion, and hence we should grant application for rehearing and affirm the judgment of the trial court. It is argued in effect that the part of the 1951 act which we have' italicized above shows a legislative recognition of the fact that the existing statutes relating to teacher tenure gave all principals a tenure of position or a continuing service status as principal, and that the purpose of the amendatory act was to take that status away from principals who have been promoted to that position from the position of instructor until they have served, for three consecutive years as principal.
We construed the tenure law as it existed at the time appellee was trans*492ferred from principal to “assistant teaching principal.” In doing so we sought to arrive at the intention of the legislature which enacted the law. We believe we correctly arrived at that intention. The fact that another legislature may have placed a different construction on that law subsequent to the time appellee was transferred is not cause for us to abandon the construction we placed on the law as it existed prior to the amendment. In Feagin v. Comptroller, 42 Ala. 516, it was said: “ * , * * But the intention of one legislative body in the use and application of the term, in an act passed by it, is not conclusive as to the intention of another and different legislative body in the use of the term in the passage of another and different act * * 42 Ala. at page 522.
Ppinion extended and application for rehearing overruled.
BROWN, FOSTER, SIMPSON, and STAKELY, JJ.,'concur.