Court Opinion

ID: 9640681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:11:55.400465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:22.990191
License: Public Domain

SPECTOR, Justice,
joined by HIGHTOWER, DOGGETT, and GAMMAGE, Justices, dissenting.
Doris Dodd is not claiming that she is entitled to keep her job as a school nurse. All she claims is that after more than twenty years with the Wink-Loving Independent School District, she is entitled to know the reasons why the school district is not renewing her term contract, and to have a chance to be heard in regard to those reasons. The Texas Legislature considered those interests so important to public education that it accorded them constitutional protection. See Grounds v. Tolar Indep. Sch. Dist., 856 S.W.2d 417 (Tex.1993). Today, however, the majority strips Doris Dodd of her constitutionally-protected rights, and allows Texas school districts to arbitrarily refuse to renew school nurses’ contracts without any notice or hearings at all. I dissent.
In reaching its result, the majority substantially modifies the language of the Term Contract Nonrenewal Act, Tex.Educ.Code §§ 21.201-.211. This Act guarantees procedural safeguards to protect certain profes*8sional school employees — grouped together as “teachers” — from arbitrary and capricious nonrenewals. See Seifert v. Lingleville Indep. Sch. Dist., 692 S.W.2d 461, 462 (Tex.1985). The Act defines the term “teacher” as “a superintendent, principal, supervisor, classroom teacher, counselor, or other full-time professional employee, except paraprofessional personnel, who is required to hold a valid certificate or teaching permit.” Tex. Educ.Code § 21.201(1).
The majority does not dispute, that Doris Dodd is a “full-time professional employee” for purposes of the statute. Rather, it focuses on the other requirements in section 21.-201(1), and concludes that Dodd is not “required to hold a valid certificate or teaching permit.”
The State Board of Education requires every school nurse to hold a current registration with the Texas State Board of Nurse Examiners. 19 TexAdmin.Code § 141.249 (West April 1, 1992). To be registered with the Board of Nurse Examiners, a nurse must hold a certificate, attested by the seal of the Board, verifying that the nurse passed a prescribed examination. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat. Ann. art. 4518, § 3 (Vernon Supp.1994). The effect of these provisions is clear: a school nurse is required to hold a valid certificate.
The majority holds, however, that a nursing certificate is not really a certificate at all. In support of this conclusion, the majority observes that the certification of teachers “serves different purposes” from the licen-sure of nurses. 870 S.W.2d at 6. This is, of course, true; and the legislature surely understood this difference when it enacted the Term Contract Nonrenewal Act. Nonetheless, in drafting the statute, the legislature extended protection to any “professional employee ... who is required to hold a valid certificate or teaching permit.” Tex.Educ. Code § 21.201(1) (emphasis added).
With today’s opinion, the majority has uprooted the word “teaching” and moved it three words to the left, over the disjunctive “or,” so that it now modifies the term “certificate.” 1 The legislature certainly could have drafted the statute to refer to “teaching certificates,” but it chose not to do so. This legislative decision was perfectly rational: recognizing that not all professionals employed by a school district are subject to certification by the Central Education Agency, the legislature deliberately extended term-contract protection to those other professionals, such as nurses and psychologists, who are subject to certification within their own professions.2
The legislature took a similar approach when it enacted the Teachers’ Professional Practices Act, Tex.Educ.Code §§ 13.201-.218. This Act, like the Term Contract Non-renewal Act, defines “teacher” broadly to include any “professional employee who is required to hold a valid certificate or teaching permit.” § 13.202(1). The ethical standards established under the Act govern all “Texas educators,” 19 Tex.Admin.Code § 177.1,3 and include provisions applicable to *9all professionals in public education.4 Administrative penalties under the Act, however, attach only to those actually holding teacher’s certificates. See Tex.Educ.Code § 13.211 (authorizing “suspension or revocation of the teaching certificate of the member”); 19 TexAdmin.Code § 181.1-.2 (allowing only complaints by or against an “active certificated member of the teaching profession,” defined to include only one who holds a “valid Texas teacher’s certificate”). Thus, while the Professional Practices Act does create general standards of conduct, its enforcement by the Teachers’ Professional Practices Commission implicates only those holding teacher’s certificates; like the Term Contract Nonrenewal Act, the Professional Practices Act entrusts other professional boards with responsibility for ensuring the qualifications of those they certify.
The majority reshapes this regulatory framework by declaring that the scope of the Professional Practices Act, set out in section 13.201(1), does not extend beyond the reach of its enforcement procedures, set out in section 13.211. Presumably, the Teachers’ Professional Practices Commission will now have to revamp its regulations so that its standards of conduct, 19 TexAdmin.Code § 177.1, will have the same narrow scope as its enforcement provisions, 19 TexAd-min.Code § 181.1-.2. This will have the effect of exempting certain professionals in Texas schools — such as nurses and school psychologists — from the Code of Ethics established for all Texas educators.
• Having rewritten the definition of “teacher” in the Teachers’ Professional Practices Act, the majority then makes the additional leap of extending the same definition to the Term Contract Nonrenewal Act. The majority never explains why these two statutes— enacted ten years apart, for wholly different purposes — must be construed identically; ordinarily, the “dominant consideration in construing a statute” is “the purpose for which the statute was enacted.” Flowers v. Dempsey-Tegeler & Co., 472 S.W.2d 112, 115 (Tex.1971).
This court has previously recognized that the Term Contract Nonrenewal Act was enacted to remedy a lack of procedural safeguards. Seifert v. Lingleville Indep. Sch. Dist., 692 S.W.2d at 462. As a remedial statute, the Act must be given “the most comprehensive and liberal construction possible.” Burch v. City of San Antonio, 518 S.W.2d 540, 544 (Tex.1975). Discarding this longstanding rule, the majority defers to the Education Commissioner’s construction of the statute. 870 S.W.2d at 7. Such deference overlooks the history of the Act; it was the reluctance of the Commissioner and the school districts to provide procedural safeguards that necessitated enactment of the statute in the first place.
Doris Dodd’s contract with the Wink-Loving Independent School District is entitled, “One-Year Teacher Term Contract.” The majority holds, however, that she is not entitled to the protection state law expressly provides for one-year teacher term contracts — thus sanctioning her arbitrary nonre-newal, without explanation, after more than twenty years of service. I strongly object to this roughshod treatment of one whose role is vital to public education. I would reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and provide Doris Dodd the hearing to which she is entitled.

. The concurring opinion by Justice Gonzalez disingenuously asserts that this dissent, rather than the majority, would have the Court "rewrite statutes under the guise of interpreting them." 870 S.W.2d at 7. To be clear: I would not rewrite one word of the Term Contract Non-renewal Act. I would read "valid certificate” to mean exactly that — a valid certificate. Justice Gonzalez, in contrast, provides a fifth vote for Chief Justice Phillips’ opinion — along with Justices Hecht, Corayn, and Enoch — in which the majority rearranges the clear wording of the Act and declares that a nurse is not required to hold a valid certificate. Cf. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 4518, § 3 (Vernon Supp.1994) (requiring a nurse to hold a valid certificate).

. This view is corroborated in an amicus curiae brief filed by the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, an organization composed of some 30,-000 non-administrative, certified employees of the Texas public schools. According to the Association, "[t]he bottom line is that the legislature did intend and did enact procedural protections to cover a purposefully broad category of people. This category intends to extend its protection to Petitioner, a full-time, certified professional employee who was working as a nurse for Wink-Loving Independent School District."

.These standards would ;seem to encompass the entire membership of the Association of Texas Professional Educators, a non-profit, incorporated organization dedicated to improving educational opportunities through the public schools. In an amicus curiae brief filed with this Court, the Association states that it has always included nurses in its membership, and that "to draw an arbitrary line to exclude [Doris Dodd] would do a great disservice to one of the most *9important professionals employed by a school district.”

. See, e.g., § 177.1(c)(2) (requiring "mental health, physical stamina, and social prudence”), (d)(5) (prohibiting discrimination, coercion, and harassment), (e)(3) (prohibiting disclosure of confidential information concerning students).