Court Opinion

ID: 9637584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:11:17.955225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:56.426730
License: Public Domain

DELAHANTY, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion on two grounds. First, I cannot accede to the constricted view of “unfitness to teach” advanced by the Court when it holds, as a matter of law, that a single, isolated instance of grave lack of judgment which does not involve such moral impropriety, professional incompetency, or unsuitability to the discharge of his duties as to undermine the teacher’s future classroom performance and overall impact on his students does not constitute “unfitness to teach” within the intendment of 20 M. R.S.A. § 473(4). Secondly, the majority barely concedes that any weight attaches to the judgment of the School Committee, either by reason of the Committee’s duty to safely administer the schools or by reason of the elaborate record developed by the Committee in support of its conclusions. That the judgment of the School Committee in dismissing the plaintiff may have been harsh does not make the dismissal wrong as a matter of law.
The net effect of the majority opinion is a narrowing of the application of “unfitness to teach” to a teacher’s future classroom performance and overall impact on his students. Even though there are grounds for dismissal apparently unrestrained by the classroom-performance overall-impact standards, i. e., moral impropriety, professional incompetency, and unsuitability to the discharge of [teaching] duties, the holding in the instant case makes it clear that a School Committee will not be permitted to form a conclusion as to impropriety, incompetency, or unsuitability unless the Committee can demonstrate an “undermining” of the teacher’s future classroom performance and overall impact on his students.
The majority first derives its standards for a teacher’s “unfitness” from a series of cases which the majority reads as appearing to require that the teacher’s misconduct must in some way impair the teacher-student relationship. From these cases the majority would distill an irrefragable rule, to apply as a matter of law. One case holds that various comments, such as a statement of intention to use political influence, by a teacher seeking to procure a special teaching certificate, would not justify revocation of the teacher’s then-existing certificate unless the teacher’s conduct amounted to such incompetency in her vocation in and about the school as made her unfit for the position. Browne v. Gear, 21 Wash. 147, 57 P. 359, 360-361 (1899). Two Kentucky cases are also cited as legal authority for the majority holding. In Superintendent of Common Schools v. Taylor, 105 Ky. 387, 49 S.W. 38, 39 (1899), the Kentucky Court of Appeals simply stated that a statute authorizing dismissal of a teacher “for incompetency, neglect of duty, immoral conduct or other disqualification” could not provide jurisdiction for the superintendent to revoke a teacher’s certificate, since that drastic step was controlled by a different statute. The statute under which certificates could be revoked did not mention “fitness” or “moral unfitness”. The authority of the Taylor case as a matter of law is marginal at best. In Bowman v. Ray, 118 Ky. 110, 80 S.W. 516 (1904), the court stated that while a teacher’s habitual use of intoxicating liquors could jus*649tify revocation of his teaching certificate under the appropriate statute, the factual allegations were too vague to warrant any connection to his moral character or competency at the time the revocation was sought. Whatever the cogency of this statement, it is of little precedential value as a matter of law, since the Bowman court affirmed the revocation on procedural grounds, thereby reducing the court’s preceding commentary to dicta.
In my view, the above cases offered as authority by the majority prescribe no controlling rule of law for the instant case. First, they all concern revocation of a teaching certificate, a sanction considerably more serious than dismissal from the school system of one county or one administrative district. Secondly, the teacher’s conduct at issue in the above cases did not imperil the safety of students and is therefore far less severe than that charged to the plaintiff in the instant case. Third, there is no mention in the above cases that teacher misconduct consonant with dismissal must in some way impair the teacher-student relationship. I do not read the cases as even appearing to discuss that relationship. Thus, I cannot agree that these cases support the rule advanced by the majority as a legal requirement.
However, in Overstreet v. Lord, 160 Miss. 444, 134 So. 169 (1931), a teacher dismissal statute with language substantially identical to the dismissal statute in the above-discussed Kentucky cases was applied to facts strongly suggesting a single act of grave teacher misconduct. When a teacher went to school knowing that he had smallpox, started to teach his students in class, was restrained by the principal and county health officer, who pointed out that the teacher’s condition was highly communicable, and still the teacher insisted on being able to teach, the teacher’s dismissal for “incompetency, neglect of duty, immoral conduct, or other disqualification” was upheld. 134 So. at 170-171. The superintendent claimed the legal right to remove the teacher on the ground that the teacher had exposed the school-children to the dangers of the disease. The teacher sought judicial relief by petition for a writ of mandamus. Issuance of the writ was within the discretion of the court, but the court denied the writ on the ground that since the teacher had violated a criminal statute by going abroad in the company of others not having the disease, he was not before the court with clean hands and was not entitled to the writ even if he had been wrongfully dismissed. But the court also stated its opinion that the teacher’s conduct was such as authorized his removal from the school. Id. at 170.
I regard the case before us to be much closer in principle to Overstreet than to the cases cited by the majority involving revocation of teaching certificates. I do not think it can be denied that plaintiff’s grave lack of judgment in leaving a revolver and ammunition in his jacket pockets, in a classroom alcove, unattended by him for part of the day, within reach of students, posed a substantial risk to the well-being of the students and of the entire school community. The risk may not have been as great or sure as smallpox, perhaps, but it was sufficiently real to call into question plaintiff’s fitness to teach. Whether the substantiality of the risk bears a material relation to the teacher’s fitness to teach is, in a case such as this, a question of judgment initially confided to the School Committee. There is no reason, as a matter of law, why fitness must be judged with specific regard to a teacher’s future classroom performance, as the majority holding would require. Even the Morrison case, from which the majority adopts the language of its holding, allows for the conduct of the teacher to be evaluated in terms of its effect on the welfare of the students. See Morrison v. State Board of Education, 1 Cal.3d 214, 82 Cal.Rptr. 175, 182, 461 P.2d 375, 382 (1969). Indeed, one court has concluded that the Morrison standards for fitness to teach do not measure fitness solely by a teacher’s ability to perform the teaching function, and that a teacher’s unfitness may derive from reasons *650other than his academic proficiency. See In re Grossman, 127 N.J.Super. 13, 316 A.2d 39, 48-49 (1974). There is respectable authority for the proposition, as a matter of law, that fitness for teaching can depend on a broad range of factors and that a teacher’s classroom conduct is neither an exclusive nor necessary basis for determining his fitness. See Beilan v. Board of Public Education, 357 U.S. 399, 406, 78 S.Ct. 1317, 1322, 2 L.Ed.2d 1414, 1420 (1958).
The leading Maine case construing 20 M.R.S.A. § 473(4) stated that unfitness to teach includes moral and temperamental unfitness as well as lack of educational training and ability. Hopkins v. Bucksport, 119 Me. 437, 440, 111 A. 734, 735-736 (1920). The majority seizes upon that statement and urges that temperament, as used in Hopkins, should be read as bespeaking a permanent attribute of an individual’s physical constitution. But as I read Hopkins, the plain intention of the Court was to suggest that unfitness to teach could equally well be shown by salient defects of character as well as by inadequacy in professional attributes or qualifications. Though the majority cites Redcay v. State Board of Education, 130 N.J.L. 369, 33 A.2d 120, 122, aff’d, 131 N.J.L. 326, 36 A.2d 428 (1944) as illustrating that unfitness for a task is best shown by a series of incidents, the case stands for no more than the elementary truism that many incidents are a preferable way to prove one’s point, but that one incident, if sufficiently flagrant, is enough. 33 A.2d at 122. Though the majority concedes in a footnote that some single incidents, as yet undefined, might appropriately constitute unfitness to teach, the footnote is dwarfed by the majority holding that plaintiff’s conduct, as a matter of law, is not sufficiently flagrant to warrant a determination of unfitness. The practical consequence of this holding will be to buttress the contention in future cases that teachers, as a matter of law, are entitled to one aberrant life-im-perilling blunder.
The statute construed in Hopkins, and still applicable today, provides only two grounds for dismissal of tenured teachers. Since there is no general language or catch-all phrase in addition to the enumerated grounds of dismissal, it seems essential that the existing grounds be interpreted with sufficient latitude to effectuate the expressed legislative purpose. See Beilan, supra, 357 U.S. at 406-407, 78 S.Ct. at 1322-1323, 2 L.Ed.2d at 1420-1421. The teacher dismissal statute provides elaborate procedural safeguards, which were carefully observed in the instant case. I am unable to agree with the majority when it implies that the School Committee dismissed the plaintiff “in order to calm a fear of its constituency.” Such a fear is not a part of the record and may not be assigned without proof as the motive force for the School Committee’s action. The observance of due process afforded the teacher ample opportunity to build a record, to point out his enthusiasm for guns, his recent illness, his fatigue, the ice on his car door locks — all of these factors that apar-ently influence the majority at least to the point of mention, were properly addressed to the School Committee for its consideration. Of the factors considered in the Morrison case, especially factors in mitigation, such as the likelihood of recurrence, the effect of previous service, the significance of the disciplinary action taken, see 461 P.2d at 386-387, these too are initially reposed within the judgment of the School Committee under our statutory procedures. Of course, it is within the competence of this Court to review the legal sufficiency of that judgment. But I do not think we can say there was error before the School Commiteee, or that the School Committee erred in law in concluding that the plaintiff’s grave lack of judgment bore a material relation to his fitness as a teacher. They were not obliged to wait till the gun was fired. They are entitled to appreciate the risk to the school community and to act on their appreciation.
*651Morever, it seems unlikely that the dangers alluded to in Morrison will be aggravated by sustaining the dismissal of the plaintiff. See 461 P.2d at 382. “Unfitness to teach” is not such broad language as to endow school committees with the power to dismiss any teacher whose personal conduct incurs their disapproval. It should be emphasized that plaintiff makes no claim that substantive constitutional rights under the First Amendment are infringed by the application of the statutory language of 20 M.R.S.A. § 473(4). See, e. g., Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S.Ct. 731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968). Nor is this a case where the school committee has invaded a teacher’s privacy and seeks a dismissal on grounds substantially unrelated to and having no material bearing on the teacher’s conduct in a professional role as it affects the school community. See, e. g., Jarvella v. Willoughby Eastlake City School District Board of Education, 12 Ohio Misc. 288, 233 N.E.2d 143, 145-146 (1967).
Unfitness to teach is more than an arid abstraction; no attempt to define that phrase with words of fixed meaning can ever succeed. Here, the teacher’s conduct manifestly related to the performance of his duties as a teacher. Solicitude and care for the welfare of the students are as much a part of the fitness to teach as a college education or a neat grade book. The School Committee judged plaintiff’s care grossly inadequate, and the potential consequences indicative of unfitness to teach. The Committee was entitled, indeed, was responsible, to question the wisdom of allowing the plaintiff to remain entrusted with the daily instruction of youth. That the School Committee chose to apply a severe punishment makes the teacher’s conduct neither more, nor less, unfit. The primary decision was theirs to make, and we should not hasten to interpose our judgment as “a matter of law” so long as the dismissal bears a material relation to the teacher’s conduct as educator and participant in the school community, and impairs no protected right.
The Superior Court properly sustained the decision of the School Committee.
Plaintiff’s appeal should be denied.