Court Opinion

ID: 9579738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:58:06.381553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:43.977059
License: Public Domain

NEELY, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
Once again I am required to dissent to this Court’s perfunctory overruling of a school board’s considered decision not to rehire an untenured teacher. I certainly believe that the appellant ought to have attended the second hearing that was held to allow her principal, absent for personal reasons from the first hearing, to testify as to why he felt she was unfit to teach our children. Admittedly the hearing was held ten days later than the statutory thirty-day period mandated for non-renewal hearings but, nevertheless, a conscientious teacher would not cavalierly ignore the opportunity to clear her reputation. Furthermore this case establishes very bad law in that the hearing was begun in proper time and merely continued for manifest necessity.
Since this Court’s holding in Beverlin v. Board of Ed. of Lewis County, 158 W.Va. 1067, 216 S.E.2d 554 (1975), the motto of the WVEA to unfit teachers has been “fear not, the Supreme Court of Appeals will reinstate you!” As I noted in my dissent in Beverlin, supra, this Court appears determined:
to undermine the ability of those charged with responsibility to discharge their duties in a competent manner. The increasing substitution of court judgment for the judgments of all other decision-makers causes administration to become increasingly chaotic because of paralysis prompted by surplusage of procedural and substantive due process which leads not to justice but to total incompetence and inability to govern.” Id., at 158 W.Va. 1076, 216 S.E.2d 559.
Accordingly, I dissent.