ADVERSE EMPLOYMENT ACTIONS AND PUBLIC SCHOOL ...

Nos. 4, 47, and 2 (1990 Mont.), school administrators successfully argued that their
reassignments and termination were improper because they should have been allowed to bump
employees with lesser seniority. Moreover, administrators in Appeal of Bernard E. Cowden etc.
Moon Area School District (1984 Pa. Commw.) and Gibbons v. New Castle Area School District
(1985 Pa. Commw.) succeeded in litigation by showing that they were reassigned during a
reduction in force period based on performance and not seniority, which was against
Pennsylvania code. These reduction in force violations were not the only areas where
administrators succeeded in litigation.
Interestingly, 7 of the 30 cases where administrators succeeded in full were classified as
failed leadership cases by the researcher. Of the 7 cases, 4 successfully showed that the school
did not possess sufficient evidence to claim that leadership performance was so poor as to
warrant termination. That is to say that the school boards and/or systems failed to prove that
termination was necessary when it was carried out. Those cases were Pryor School District v.
Superintendent of Public Instruction (1985 Mont.), Board of Education v. Van Kast, (1993 Ill.
App.), Flickinger v. Lebanon School District (2006 Pa. Commw.) and McFerren v. Farrell Area
School District (2010 Pa. Commw.). These cases return to the previously made point that schools
often choose to avoid termination proceedings for the very reason shown above. The burden of
proof is much more difficult to meet than it is to simply wait out a contract or reassign an
administrator in order to lessen friction at his/her current workplace.
Further research in Table 8 revealed that school systems were victorious in 73 of the 125
cases that were briefed from the 30-year window. Table 12 displays all the cases that were won
by the school systems.
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