The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal has reversed a Lafayette district court judge’s ruling in favor of the Lafayette Parish School Board and sided with an assistant principal whose 2-year contract renewal was cut in half at the recommendation of Superintendent Burnell Lemoine.
The ruling sends the case of Sherry Julian-Robinson versus LPSB back to district court in Lafayette for further proceedings.
According to the court ruling, Julian-Robinson, a tenured teacher in the Lafayette Parish School System, was promoted to assistant principal of Live Oak Elementary in 2006 — a position in which she currently remains. The initial promotional contract was for two years, a time period prescribed by state law. Her contract was renewed for two years in 2008, again for the state minimum of two years. However, during the 2009-2010 school year — one year into that second renewal, according to the appellate court’s ruling — Lemoine recommended the contract renewal be for only one year “as a result of several areas listed as ‘need[ing] improvement’ on her performance evaluation for that year.”
The school board acquiesced to Lemoine’s recommendation and cut the contract renewal in half. Julian-Robinson took the board to court, but Judge Thomas Duplantier sided with the board.
The three judges on the 3rd Circuit panel led by Chief Judge Ulysses Thibodeaux unanimously disagreed:
While the LPSB may have discretion in negotiating contract lengths for terms between two and four years, that discretion simply does not extend to allow it to offer a contract for a term of less than two years. Any new, renewal, or other following contract should have been for two to four years as mandated by [state law].
Accordingly, Mrs. Julian-Robinson has clearly stated a cause of action against LPSB and the trial court was incorrect in ruling otherwise. Therefore, we hereby reverse the decision of the trial court and remand this case for further proceedings in accordance with our rulings.
Read the full 3rd Circuit ruling here.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
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MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
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MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
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