Could improve ability to get misbehavers out of the classroom

Despite teacher protests, multiple sources, including KET’s Renee Shaw, are reporting that Senate Bill 8, which will improve the Kentucky Teacher Tribunal process, has cleared both legislative chambers and is on its way to Governor Matt Bevin’s desk for final signature.

Teacher Tribunals are important in Kentucky. When a school system takes action to discipline or fire a teacher for cause, that teacher has the right to take the case to the tribunal. History shows that teachers win an unusually high number of those cases even though school systems tend to be reluctant to take such actions precisely because the tribunals often do rule against them.

These well-known issues are discussed in multiple articles such as the Courier-Journal’s “More JCPS teachers requesting tribunals,” which ran on October 14, 2016. The article notes that under the current system:

“Statewide, statistics since 2005 show that the cases that actually make it before a tribunal are more likely to have the charges against the employee either dismissed or modified than to have the district's decision affirmed.

”Extra insight comes from a WDRB article from November 26, 2014, which says that:

“More than 70 percent of the terminations that went to tribunals in Kentucky from 2005 through 2010 were partially or completely reversed, according to data requested by and shared with the state's Interim Joint Committee on Education in November 2011.”

We have also discussed the Teacher Tribunal issues several times in the BIPPS Blog such as here and here.

One example we captured in 2011 from a now offline Kentucky School Boards Association news release was about an:

“elementary teacher who had a history of work-related problems, which ended with his firing after he grabbed a student, pulled her to the front of the room and belittled her in front of her classmates. Davis fired the teacher, but a tribunal reversed his decision, leading to the teacher being reassigned as a highly paid substitute at a high school in the district.”

Somehow, only allowing an abusive teacher access to students on an occasional (substitute) basis rather than full time doesn’t seem to solve the problem. And, the taxpayer got hit, too.

In any event, the new bill will inject more professionalism into the Teacher Tribunal process. Now, the tribunal board will always be headed by a lawyer specifically trained in Kentucky’s tribunal process, which is the way other appeal boards in the commonwealth are headed. SB-8 marks an important step up in the professionalism of the Teacher Tribunals while maintaining the teachers’ rights to use the system. Hopefully, the rights of students to a competent, not aggressive teacher will be better served, as well.