An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 4 - Employment Contracts And Separation Of Employees

and benefit information and job responsibilities and obligations. As such, the Court held that the teacher worked for the school under an employment contract

for a specified term, and was not an at-will employee. Baker v. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Diego 411

A teacher fell down a stairwell at a private school and took a one-week leave of absence under the California Family Rights Act to recover. Five months after the teacher’s fall, the school conducted a performance review of the teacher, even though no such evaluation had been done in the past four years. Following the performance review, the school Principal informed the teacher that there were several areas of concern in the teacher’s work performance and her behavior. The teacher’s employment was based on a contract for a specified term, and the school decided not to renew the contract after its expiration. The teacher sued the school alleging that she was wrongfully termination in violation of public policy. The school argued that the teacher’s wrongful termination claim failed because a wrongful termination in violation of public policy cannot be based upon the non-renewal of an employment contract. The Court agreed with the school and held that when an individual is employed for a specified term, the expiration of the term ends employment. The Court held that a decision not to renew a contract set to expire is not an actionable tort under California law.

B. 10-M ONTHS V ERSUS 12-M ONTH C ONTRACTS Schools that provide employment contracts for a specified duration often either provide 10- month or 12-month contracts for teachers. Schools can choose to use 10-month employment contracts for teachers. Typically, 10-month contracts limit a teacher’s duration of employment to exclude work during the summer months. During the two summer months, schools that provide 10-month contracts cannot expect teachers to attend meetings, participate in trainings, or teach summer courses. If teachers are on a 12-month contract, they are considered year-round employees. Schools that implement 12-month contracts need to decide whether all teachers will receive paid leave during the summer or whether teachers will be expected to be available to work during the summer. Schools may choose to require teachers remain available or “on-call” over the summer to attend meetings, participate in trainings, or prepare course work, even if in practice, schools rarely ask teachers to perform any of these tasks during the summer. There is nothing wrong with having a 12-month contract for an employee who technically only works 10 months out of the year. Schools that employ 12-month employees need to be careful about how they calculate requests for leave. Technically, if a teacher will be unavailable to report to work when required to do so, the teacher needs to request leave and the teacher’s time off may be counted as weeks of leave. For example, a teacher who is going to have knee surgery and will be bedridden for a week during a required summer training course should request leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for the teacher’s own serious health condition. For teachers on maternity leave, the summer weeks are counted as the Pregnancy Disability Leave, FMLA, and/or California Family

An Administrator’s Guide to California Private School Law ©2019 Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 110