Teacher Contracts Issue Brief
Background
History: In the midst of the late 19th century labor struggles, elementary and secondary public school teachers
began a movement to raise public awareness of their working conditions. They desired to bring particular
attention to the practice of public school teachers being subject to dismissals for arbitrary and non-performance
related reasons: administrators playing favorites; powerful parents objecting to their child receiving poor grades;
overly-zealous parents or school boards objecting to a teacher’s lesson plans, teaching method or viewpoint.
These teachers argued that more stringent legal employment protections were needed to allow them to be able to
conduct lessons in their classrooms and broach discussion of “controversial” topics without fear of losing their
jobs because of objections from local political factions or loud parents. In 1909, New Jersey created the nation’s
first system of legal employment protections, known as “tenure,” for public school teachers. Tenure provides
teachers who have completed a probationary period with a perpetual set of “due process” rights that require
evidentiary hearings and showings of just cause- usually inability to perform or wrongful act- before dismissal
actions may be taken against them.
There has recently been a growing movement to reform teacher tenure around the country. Tennessee, New
Jersey, and Louisiana have reformed their tenure systems to make attainment and retention of tenure dependent
upon consistent showings of effectiveness on evaluations, and removing the perpetual nature of tenure by
revoking it from tenured teachers who are rated ineffective on teacher evaluations. Florida replaced tenure entirely
with a system of annual contracts for teachers who demonstrate effectiveness.
North Carolina: North Carolina did not grant a comprehensive set of legal employment protections to public
school teachers until 1971 and the word “tenure” did not appear in the title of an act dealing with public school
teacher employment until 20 years later.1 Currently, North Carolina’s public school teacher employment
protections law is known as “System of employment for public school teachers”,2 and tenure protections are
referred to as “career status.”
North Carolina’s teacher employment system requires teachers to teach for four years before being eligible for
career status. Once they have obtained career status, teachers can only be terminated for one of 15 specific
grounds, including “inadequate performance.” Legislation was passed in 2011 that streamlined the timeframes
involved with career status teacher dismissal proceedings and established a specific, statutory definition of
“inadequate performance” linked to the state teacher evaluation system.3
NCSBA Position
Career Status Elimination. School board members have a responsibility to their communities to ensure that only
competent and effective teachers are employed in their schools. This responsibility cannot be properly exercised
when laws create barriers to school boards’ ability to remove ineffective teachers. NCSBA believes that North
Carolina should join other states in replacing the antiquated system of tenure. NCSBA supports replacing teacher
career status with a system of renewable contracts of 1, 2, 3, or 4-years, the length of which would be determined
by the local board employing the teacher. This would allow for local control over teacher employment decisions
and ensure that ineffective teachers can be promptly removed. Teachers would remain protected by the numerous
employment laws in place at the federal level.
Legal Implications. Any effort to eliminate teacher career status in North Carolina must take account of the
potential legal ramifications. Long serving teachers who have earned career status are certain to initiate litigation
against local boards and the State should legislation be enacted which removes their career status. While there are
Robert P. Joyce, The Law of Employment in North Carolina’s Public Schools, Institute of Government (2000), pp. 379-380.
G.S. 115C-325.
3
S.L. 2011-348.
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2
legal arguments to be made that ending career status for those who have already earned it is permissible, North
Carolina case law on the subject is scant and it will likely take years of litigation for clear guidelines to emerge.
There are two US Supreme Court cases from the 1930’s to which North Carolina courts would likely look for
guidance. In both cases, the plaintiffs alleged that the state statutes rolling back the rights of tenured teachers were
laws “impairing the obligations of contracts,” in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution and that
the actions at issue violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights. The decision in both cases was based upon
whether the challenged statutes established tenure and thus created “contractual rights.” In Phelps v. Board of
Education,4 the U.S. Supreme Court accepted a state court’s determination that the New Jersey tenure statute was
a regulation of local boards’ conduct rather than a granting of contractual rights. However, in Indiana ex rel.
Anderson v. Brand,5 the Supreme Court, in dealing with an Indiana tenure statute, stated that “A legislative
enactment may contain provisions which, when accepted as the basis of action by individuals, become contracts
between them and the State or its subdivisions within the protection of Article I, Section 10.” After reviewing the
language and history of Indiana’s tenure law, the Court noted that the statute speaks of the making and cancelling
of indefinite contracts and the word “contract” appears 25 times. According to the Court, the word “contract”
apparently was not used inadvertently or in other than its usual legal meaning. Although the Indiana Supreme
Court had ruled against the plaintiff teacher, the U.S. Supreme Court opinion cited four state Supreme Court
decisions that “uniformly held that the teacher’s right to continued employment by virtue of the indefinite contract
created pursuant to the Act was contractual.”
The question as it applies to North Carolina law, therefore, would likely turn on whether the legislature intended
to create contractual rights when it initially established career status. The language of the current statute itself
does not suggest that it did—the only reference to contracts appears in the provisions regarding probationary
teachers and school administrators. Two North Carolina Court of Appeals cases6 are devoid of any language that
could be construed as having created a contractual right. A further complication is that at some school districts
employ teachers through written documents that contain the word “contract.”
While it can be argued that the legal authority supports the proposition that eliminating career status for teachers
who have already attained it is within the bounds of the constitution, school boards and the State are certain to
face tremendous costs in money, time, and resources litigating the issue indefinitely.
Balanced Reform. In light of the numerous legal questions regarding eliminating career status for all teachers,
NCSBA believes the most prudent reform effort is one in which future teachers are moved to 1, 2, 3, or 4-year
renewable contracts, and teachers who have earned career status or will earn career status by the end of the 201516 school year are grandfathered. This fair, balanced approach to reforming career status will protect school
districts and the State and provide a measure of certainty to long serving teachers who have earned career status.
A similar approach was taken when career status was eliminated for principals and proved to be successful,
workable, and fair for all parties.
4
300 U.S. 319 (1937).
303 U.S. 95 (1938).
6
Taylor v. Crisp, 21 N.C. App. 359 (1974), Hicks v. Wake Co. Board of Education, 187 N.C. App. 485 (2007).
5