Court Opinion

ID: 9700675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:43:20.674346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:13.122854
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
*259The majority clearly errs in finding that section 11-1125.1 of the Public School Code, Act of March 10, 1949, as amended, 24 P.S. § 1125.1, does not “compel the school to seek and achieve the furlough of the least senior employee possible.” Maj. op. at 258.
Section 1125.1(a) provides in relevant part that “[professional employes shall be suspended under section 1124 (relating to causes for suspension) in inverse order of seniority within the school entity of current employment.” (emphasis added) A plainer statement of the intent of the Legislature to make seniority the touchstone for making necessary professional staff cuts could not have been made. And, in fact, the debate accompanying passage of the bill regarding the suspension of teachers convinces me that our legislators specifically rejected any attempts to permit school districts to base realignment decisions on anything other than seniority and certification. See Legislative Journal — House at 1117-21, 1134-35, 1212-15 (June 4 and 6, 1979). Once again, the majority is impermissibly subjecting such decisions to the “unbridled, arbitrary discretion” of local school administrators. See Gibbons v. New Castle Area School District, 518 Pa. 443, 451, 543 A.2d 1087, 1091 (1988) (Larsen, J., dissenting).
Appellant herein, James Duncan, had sixteen years of seniority and was “bumped” from his position in the science department when an administrator with more seniority and with certification in science and in physical education was realigned to the science department at a time of declining student enrollment. There was a teacher in the physical education department with only twelve years’ seniority. Due to the fact that appellant had more seniority than this physical education teacher, the school board was required by law to realign its professional staff so that appellant would have retained his job and so that the professional employee with the least seniority would have been furloughed. This statutorily mandated result would have been accomplished by realigning the administrator with dual certification to the physical education department.
*260Accordingly, I would reverse the order of Commonwealth Court and I would reinstate the order of the Court of Common Pleas of Beaver County.
PAPADAKOS, J., joins this dissenting opinion.