School board not required to adjusting teaching schedules to avoid a layoff

School board not required to adjusting teaching schedules to avoid a layoff
Soukey v Cohoes City School Dist., Commissioner of Education Decision 14,106

Faced with a reduced work schedule or a perhaps layoff, a teacher may ask the school board to adjust the schedules of other teachers in order to retain him or her in a full-time position. Is the school board obligated to honor such a request?

This was one of the elements in Donna Soukey’s appeal to the Commissioner of Education. Soukey, tenured as a health teacher, was employed in a 6/10’s health teacher position following the abolishment of a full-time health teacher position by the district. Soukey was the least senior tenured health teacher at the time.

Soukey argued that the district “could have adjusted the schedules of other teachers ... to facilitate her assignment to classes within her various certification areas in order to retain her in full-time service.” She provided the Commissioner with examples of how the district could have accomplished this.

The Commissioner pointed out that a school board is “not required to shuffle the schedules of teachers in tenure areas other than health merely because [she] happens to hold certification in those areas.”

Noting that Soukey was the least senior teacher in the health tenure area, the Commissioner said that her services as a full time teacher were properly reduced. Commissioner Mills concluded that Cohoes was not required to make scheduling adjustments that would affect teachers’ services in any other tenure area in an effort to retain Soukey as a full-time employee.

The major element in Soukey’s appeal was her claim that she was not the least senior teacher in the health tenure area. The Commissioner ruled that there was nothing in the record to support overturning the district’s seniority determinations with respect to the several teachers in the health tenure area involved in this appeal.

Another aspect of the appeal concerned Soukey request for “reimbursement for the costs of bringing this appeal” as part of the relief she sought. The Commissioner responded by pointing out that he “lacks authority to award such costs and attorney’s fees in an appeal under Education Law Section 310” and dismissed this branch of Soukey’s appeal as well.

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