Court Opinion

ID: 9513231
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:33:04.235746+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:46.933202
License: Public Domain

NEUMANN, Justice,
dissenting.
[¶ 29] I agree with the majority: if a school administrator keeps a secret personnel file and it is later used at a nonrenewal hearing, such use would deny specific rights granted by N.D.C.C. eh. 15-38.2. I must, however, respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that the notice requirements of 15-38.2 are satisfied by doing nothing more than promptly informing a teacher about any complaints.
[¶ 30] Section 15-38.2-04, N.D.C.C., provides “[a]ny complaint made against a teacher ... must promptly be called to the attention of the teacher if said complaint is to be placed in the teacher’s personnel file.” (Emphasis added.) The majority apparently gives this statute a strict, literal reading, and holds it does not require a school administrator to tell the teacher whether the complaint *219is going to be placed in the teacher’s personnel file, but only that the complaint has been made. While the statute, standing alone, perhaps can be read that way, such an interpretation fails to consider a teacher’s rights under N.D.C.C. §§ 15-88.2-03 and 15-38.2-02 to object to material placed in the teacher’s file, and to submit written notations for attachment to material in the file. If a teacher need only be told complaints have been made, without being told whether those complaints are going to be placed in the teacher’s personnel file, the right to object to things placed in the file becomes meaningless.
[¶ 31] In this case, the teacher was promptly informed of complaints against him in November of 1993, but those complaints were not placed in the teacher’s personnel file at that time, and the teacher was not informed the complaints would be kept in his personnel file. The principal, rather than placing the complaints in the teacher’s file and advising the teacher of such action, instead made notes of the complaints in his daily planner, and failed to inform the teacher such notes were being kept. It was not until April 11, 1994, the same day the teacher’s nonrenewal was recommended to the school board, that a summary of the complaints against the teacher was transferred to the teacher’s personnel file, again without notice to the teacher.
[¶32] The school district has argued an administrator’s daily planner cannot possibly be a teacher’s personnel file, secret or otherwise, and therefore the requirements of N.D.C.C. ch. 15-38.2 cannot have been violated in this case. It seems to me, however, that for purposes of N.D.C.C. ch. 15-38.2 a file must include any place or thing, including a daily planner, in which a school administrator keeps or retains information regarding a teacher. Any narrower interpretation would permit administrators to avoid the legislative mandate of N.D.C.C. ch. 15-38.2 entirely, merely by gathering information about teachers in any place they might choose — a shoebox, a daily planner, or a stack of papers on the corner of a desk — and simply saying the particular gathering place is not labeled a “personnel file.”
[¶ 33] Principal Diede’s daily planner was being used as a place to retain information and complaints regarding a teacher, therefore, it must be considered a personnel file for the purposes of N.D.C.C. ch. 15-38.2. Because the teacher was not told the complaints were being placed in this personnel file, the use of those complaints at the teacher’s nonrenewal hearing denied the teacher specific rights granted by N.D.C.C. ch. 15-38.2, and constituted an arbitrary action by the school board, an action requiring reversal of the district court’s judgment in this case.
[¶ 34] SANDSTROM, J., concurs.