Court Opinion

ID: 9819294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:21:54.750071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:29.800531
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE TULLY, dissenting: I must respectfully dissent. I cannot accept the majority’s conclusion that the trial court’s findings are not against the manifest weight of the evidence. After reviewing the evidence, I believe the trial court and the majority have reached an incorrect result in finding that the Head Start program was not an educational institution. Black’s Law Dictionary 514 (6th ed. 1990) states that education “ [c] omprehends not merely the instruction received at school or college, but the whole course of training; moral, *** intellectual, and physical. Education may be particularly directed to either the mental, moral, or physical powers and faculties, but in its broadest and best sense it relates to them all.” Further, it defines “educational purposes,” in pertinent part, as “not limited to such school properties as would relieve some substantial educational burden from the state.” Black’s Law Dictionary 514 (6th ed. 1990). Even though, as the majority reasons, the Head Start program does not lessen the government’s burden to educate children, I do not believe that fact should act as a limiting factor to its educational purposes. I believe that the Head Start program provides education in the broadest and best sense of the word. The program includes the teaching of moral, intellectual, social and health skills. Accordingly, this program is exactly what the legislature intended to fit within the meaning of educational institution when it drafted the Illinois Unemployment Insurance Act. As the majority noted, the purpose of the Act is to provide compensation benefits to an unemployed individual in order to relieve economic distress caused by involuntary unemployment. Kelley v. Department of Labor, 160 Ill. App. 3d 958, 513 N.E.2d 988 (1987). The spirit and intent of the Act are to provide unemployment benefits to individuals involuntarily unemployed until they can secure employment. Here, the teachers chose to remain in a field where the work ordinarily does not provide year-round employment. They should not be allowed to receive unemployment benefits when there is a reasonable assurance that the teacher will teach in successive academic years and nothing is prohibiting them from seeking another job during the summer months. This type of temporary unemployment is precisely what the legislature intended to except from unemployment and allowing schoolteachers to collect this benefit undercuts the very spirit of the Act. In light of the foregoing, I would reverse the judgment of the circuit court of Cook County and remand for further proceedings consistent with this view.