Court Opinion

ID: 9520504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:41:24.790842+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:20.098074
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McDADE, dissenting: For the reasons set out below, I would find the trial court’s affirmanee of the administrative decision to be contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence and would reverse. In October 1997, Mrs. Betts made a timely application for professional leave to attend a conference of the National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE) occurring on four days in November. Because of administrative errors, the application was not acted upon and Mrs. Betts’ supervisor suggested that she use “personal” days to attend. Because she did not have four personal days left, Mrs. Betts informed her supervisor that she would only attend two days of the conference and would forego the last two days and return to school. Instead, she had her husband call to say she was sick and would not be coming in. Regarding those two days, Mrs. Betts would later testify that she had never intended to be in school for them and had intentionally deceived the Board so she could attend the entire conference. In May 1998, Mrs. Betts wanted to attend the graduation of a former student but had already used all but one-fourth day of her personal leave allotment for that year. She sought, and was allowed, reinstatement of the two personal days she had used to attend the 1997 conference. She did not direct any attention to the two days’ sick leave by including them in her reinstatement request. In February 1998, following her attendance at the 1997 NCTE conference, a grievance was filed against Mrs. Betts by 20 students. The focus of the grievance was her claimed failure to attend her classes one to two days per week, to provide adequate assistance with preparation for an upcoming examination, and to prepare for those classes she did attend. In response to their complaint, Mrs. Betts admitted that she had not kept any grade or attendance records and had, for this reason, given all of her students B or B- grades. The admitted deficiency was remediated. During school year 1996-97, Mrs. Betts had taken 16 professional leave days. Fearing that she intended to repeat that pattern in 1997-98, her principal, Craig Spiers, sought and got a list of Mrs. Betts’ professional commitments for the current school year. In response, Spiers advised her to follow through on those commitments but indicated to her that the number of professional leave days would be limited the following year by a policy that he intended to propose and that he expected the Board to adopt. Although his proposal was ultimately not approved, Mrs. Betts was aware of his concern. After February 1998 she was also aware that her students found her attendance and teaching performance inadequate to their needs. Because of this knowledge, and her belief, which she acknowledged during the hearing, that a request by her for professional leave would not be granted, Mrs. Betts did not even seek such leave to attend the November 1998 NOTE conference. She had, however, registered in October for the conference. To ensure her ability to attend, she falsely informed her supervisor on November 16-17 that her sister was scheduled for surgery and requested family medical leave to help her out. The dates of her sister’s purported surgical need coincided with the conference dates. Investigation disclosed that Mrs. Betts was, in fact, in attendance at the conference, not with her sister. She stated at the hearing that, because of her conference responsibilities, she was “going to go no matter what.” In the face of these facts, the hearing officer found that, although her conduct was “willful, in the dictionary sense of the term,” he did “not believe that she [acted knowingly] in order to flaunt or defy the Employer’s legitimate interests.” I believe that this finding is against the manifest weight of the evidence, including Mrs. Betts’ own admissions of deliberately lying to frustrate the perceived efforts of her supervisors to curb her absences and to further her own intention of attending the conference “no matter what.” I have no quarrel with the cases of Szabo v. Board of Education of Community Consolidated School District 54, 117 Ill. App. 3d 869 (1983), and Board of Education of Round Lake Area Schools v. State Board of Education, 292 Ill. App. 3d 101 (1997), which have found the unauthorized use of sick and vacation days to be remediable in certain circumstances. In my opinion, however, Mrs. Betts’ conduct, as shown by the overwhelming weight of the evidence, amounts to deliberate deception and intentional insubordination and, therefore, falls within the controlling rule established by this court in Christopherson v. Spring Valley Elementary School District, 90 Ill. App. 3d 460, 462, 413 N.E.2d 199, 201 (1980) (finding that “[o]nce the willful violation [has] occurred, the damage [has been] done.”) I believe the hearing officer’s determination that Mrs. Betts was “capable of remediation if she had been warned in the first instance” is contrary not only to her sworn testimony at the hearing but also to this court’s decision in Christopherson. In light of the specific facts with which we have been presented in this case, I respectfully dissent.