DE Under 3: Vaccine Mandates & More
The Transformation of Education in Florida
School District Update Podcast: Hiring H-1B Teachers in 2021-2022
They Said What? First Amendment Issues in 2020
COVID School Landscape
Leadership in the Time of COVID
BLACK HISTORY MONTH | ELLA BAKER & MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE
As we approach the new year, Franczek is pleased to recap the new legislation applicable to K-12 schools that passed in 2023. Below you will find our compilation of this year’s legislative changes. A PDF version of the 2023...more
This school year has begun with a number of changes related to teacher tenure, evaluations, and dismissals. On August 4, 2023, Governor Pritzker signed into law Public Act 103-0500, revising the Illinois School Code...more
Every year as May 1 approaches, Connecticut school districts are confronted with an unpleasant, albeit familiar, process. For better or worse, teacher non-renewal is a fact of life under the Teacher Tenure Act and the...more
In a recent Illinois case, the Second District Appellate Court affirmed a school board’s termination of a tenured teacher who sexually harassed students on the girls’ track team he coached. The students alleged that the...more
For school personnel administrators, it is a frustrating but typical experience to have a teachers’ union representative object to warnings and directives on the grounds that the warning is too broad, or not directly on point...more
On December 17, 2020, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that a community college violated the Illinois Public Community College Act when it replaced laid off tenured faculty members with adjunct faculty. The case addressed...more
A tenured professor at Erskine College in Due West claimed the institution breached its employment contract with him as set forth in the faculty manual. The trial court overruled the jury verdict in the professor’s favor, but...more
The Illinois Appellate Court recently affirmed the dismissal of a tenured fifth-grade teacher accused of intentionally breaking the seals on standardized test booklets to help students cheat on the test....more
With the end of the school year slowly approaching, remember that any recommendations to non-renew a probationary teacher’s employment for the next school year must likely be acted upon at the board’s March or April meeting. ...more
A recent Illinois State Board of Education hearing officer decision upheld the dismissal of a tenured teacher who engaged in off-topic rants in the classroom, stored pornographic images on a district laptop, and refused to...more
In a recent decision, the Appellate Court of Illinois rejected a school board’s decision to terminate a tenured teacher for misconduct despite a hearing officer’s finding that there was insufficient evidence of cause for...more
As we discussed in an alert in December, with PERA’s full implementation on September 1, 2016, new tenure rules are in effect in Illinois. ...more
A series of Twitter posts from a tenured Fresno State English professor about former First Lady Barbara Bush has once again sparked a national conversation about how the First Amendment applies in the university setting, and...more
In one of the first teacher dismissal decisions of 2017, school districts across the state of Illinois scored a victory as an independent hearing officer upheld the dismissal of a tenured teacher for improperly assisting...more
In a 1789 letter, Benjamin Franklin made the now oft-quoted observation that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” For many years, however, that certitude has been equally applicable in...more
On June 10, 2014, the trial court judge in Vergara v. State of California issued a decision striking down as unconstitutional five provisions of the California Education Code regarding public school teacher tenure procedures....more
School leaders across the country are buzzing about a California Superior Court’s recent tentative ruling that the state’s teacher tenure, dismissal, and layoff laws violate the equal protection clause of the California...more
The Connecticut Appellate Court yesterday released two notable employment law decisions. They won’t become “official” until April 30, 2013, so you have some time to digest them. I’ll cover one today and leave the other for a...more