Court Opinion

ID: 9606870
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:53:42.705098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:36.077912
License: Public Domain

Hunter, J.
(dissenting) — The majority has remanded this case to the trial court for a reevaluation of the testimony upon the theory that giving the highest consideration to the judgment of qualified certificated educators regarding conditions necessary to maintain the optimum learning atmosphere, as required by RCW 28A.58.1011, does not apply unless it relates to a rule adopted by the board of directors regarding pupil conduct; that a teacher who admits being a homosexual does not violate a rule regarding pupil conduct. Hence the above statutory requirement as to the weight to be given to the judgment of qualified educators, as exercised in this case, does not apply. I disagree.
*362This is reading RCW 28A.58.1011 out of context and disregards the entire purpose of the statute. The plain language of the statute does not limit the conditions necessary to maintain the optimum learning of the classroom to pupil conduct. It is clear that the manifest purpose of the statutory mandate is to maintain an optimum learning atmosphere in the classroom — and to say this must be limited to the conduct of pupils and that it does not apply to that of a teacher, strains logic and credulity. Implicitly, it was the intention of the legislature to protect the optimum learning atmosphere in the classroom from subversion whether it be by a teacher’s conduct, by his example or otherwise or by the conduct of the pupils.
In this case the principal, the assistant principal, and the former assistant superintendent of personnel were unanimous in their opinion that a teacher holding himself out ás a homosexual would be damaging to the optimum learning atmosphere of the classroom.
Mr. John Beer, assistant principal at Woodrow Wilson High School, testified as follows:
A. I feel that homosexuality is out of place in a public school classroom. I feel that a student from his initial years as a six-year-old until he graduates from a high school, at about 17 years, is going through his formative stages, and that a teacher, as well as a home or a church, but certainly a teacher is extremely instrumental in influencing a child in these developmental years. And I feel that consciously or unconsciously a teacher that is homosexual can do irrepairable damage in these formative years. ... If a homosexual were on our faculty, a known homosexual on our faculty, No. 1, as an Assistant Principal I would have to defend his remaining there to other members of the staff. ... It would be an extremely disruptive type of thing to have a homosexual serving as a staff member. . . . Well, I have already operated under the assumption that homosexuality is an abnormality and would be classified as immoral, and as such I don’t believe that a homosexual meets the standards, the professional standards, the community standards, that we would expect of a classroom teacher.
*363High School Principal, Maynard Ponko, testified as follows:
A. ... I feel that I know had I not taken action within the semester, the quarter, that we would have had students come up and object and not to — because they did not want to be put in his class. I had one, in particular, and he was rather violent about it. And I also feel a responsibility to the whole community and our school and feel this is not the place for a homosexual, a known homosexual, to be working. Q. What, if any, effect would this have on the faculty? A. It would form isolations. Q. Would you further amplify “isolations.” I don’t understand the term. A. Well, it had already started. Ridicule, disgust, contempt, for our housing the situation, and why don’t we move faster? Doesn’t the School Board have a right to move?
Mr. Trygve Blix, recently retired Assistant Superintendent of Personnel, Tacoma Schools, testified as follows:
A. ... I think there is a way of life that I have looked for in employing teachers through the years, and fundamentally I don’t think that homosexuality is a way of life that I can tolerate in my position. . . . I’ve worked with adolescents a long time and adolescents do admire adults, and adolescents also sometimes admire things that I don’t think society accepts, as a whole. We have all seen a lot of that and I think that could be, if the word was out that there was a homosexual teaching, that youngsters even with those tendencies could well accept them and say, this person is a fine man, he’s a homosexual, I can’t see what’s wrong with it ... I think . . . that we’ve got to teach by examples as well as by discipline.
The foregoing testimony of qualified certificated educators clearly supports the trial court’s conclusion that the school board acted properly in dismissing the appellant from the Tacoma school system. The trial court was fully justified in carrying out the purpose and intent of the statute, RCW 28A.58.1011, by giving the highest consideration to the testimony of these qualified certificated educators to insure that conditions necessary for the optimum learning atmosphere of the classroom are maintained.
To send this case back to the trial court can serve no *364useful purpose and will only cause undue delay in the final disposition of the case.
The trial court should be affirmed.
Hamilton, J., concurs with Hunter, J.
Petition for rehearing denied August 12, 1975.