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White Plains Employment Lawyer Discusses a Tenured Teacher Not Meeting Expectations

On Behalf of | May 2, 2016 | Uncategorized

As an experienced White Plains Employment Lawyer, I do a lot of work with tenured teachers in my practice.  The most frequent complaint that we have recently is that the teacher is receiving an evaluation or classroom observation that rates the teacher as either unsatisfactory, ineffective, or needs improvement in particular areas. The question arises as to whether that teacher can lose his or her job as a result of that. The word Tenure has a very distinct and important meaning in the state of New York and in other states. A tenured teacher cannot lose her job over one observation or evaluation. For a tenured teacher to lose her job, typically, she has to be served with charges under section 30,20A of the New York state education law. She is entitled to a hearing in the charges, she is entitled to the superintendent making the decision, and then if she doesn’t like that determination, she may be able to appeal to a higher level including the New York state commissioner of education.

 

The concern that every teacher has when they have an evaluation which has any negative comments is, that one evaluation will be succeeded by the next evaluation and that there are going to be problems down the road. As a White Plains Employment Lawyer, Many of my teacher clients are protected by collective bargaining agreements; some of those agreements speak about if the Annual Performance Review is unsatisfactory.  Some of the collective bargaining agreements talk to whether to many unsatisfactory APRs can result in termination. A lot of these issues depend upon the fact of the situation and the particular school. In some cases, the teachers will get their union involved to try and negotiate some thing like change in language. But one evaluation or one observation of a tenured teacher with some areas that need improvement or are ineffective is not going to necessarily result in a termination.

 

Are you a tenured teacher who is being evaluated and received a negative score? Contact dedicated White Plains Employment Lawyer Jane Gould to fight for you.

This informational blog post was provided by Jane Gould, an experienced White Plains Employment Lawyer.