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Four Things To Know About The Lawsuit Against Colorado’s Teacher Evaluation Law

Denver Public Schools
DPS is facing a lawsuit brought by a Denver-area teacher's union.

Colorado’s Supreme Court will hear the first arguments in a case challenging a provision of the state’s teacher evaluation law on Dec. 7. The lawsuit - brought by a Denver-area teacher’s union - accuses Denver Public Schools (DPS) of interpreting the law in a way that denies teachers due process. The suit also alleges that the law itself is unconstitutional.

Here are four things you need to know about the lawsuit:

1. The lawsuit is all about a provision in the 2010 law -- Senate Bill 191 -- called “mutual consent.” By this process, a teacher and a school’s principal must agree that the teacher is a good fit for that school. The goal: a teacher that wants to be in that specific classroom.

Before the law, teachers who have tenure (known in Colorado as non-probationary status) were assigned to a vacancy at a new school when enrollment in their current school declined. This process is called “forced placement.”

DPS has decried forced placement in the past, saying it puts students in front of teachers that may not want to teach in a specific school.

Current DPS policy allows for teachers to accept temporary assignments until a mutual consent arrangement is found. If a good match doesn’t pop up within a certain amount of time, however, that teacher is placed on indefinite unpaid leave.

2. The plaintiffs in the case want teachers to have a hearing before being placed on unpaid leave. They’re also demanding back pay for teachers placed on unpaid leave.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association - the union bringing the lawsuit - says the lack of a hearing violates teachers’ due process rights under Colorado’s constitution and is tantamount to punishing teachers that haven’t done anything wrong.

3. The lawsuit points to three specific things when making its case - a precedent, a law and the Colorado constitution.

The teachers suing DPS are citing a 1979 court case called Howell v. Woodlin School District. In the case, Colorado’s Supreme Court found that Roy Howell, a teacher at the Woodlin School District, was denied his due process rights when he was laid off without a hearing. The union argues that the unpaid leave teachers are placed on when they are unable to find a permanent position is essentially the same.

The lawsuit also points to the Teacher Employment, Compensation, and Dismissal Act of 1990. It says that non-probationary teachers are entitled to request a hearing before an impartial party when they’re let go from a job. It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will apply this standard to unpaid leave as well.

The plaintiffs in this case also argue that the law violates Colorado’s constitutional ban on “impairment of contracts.” When non-probationary teachers are placed on unpaid leave, they argue, the terms of their employment contract is fundamentally changed.

4.A defeat for DPS in this case could mean a return to the days of forced placement, where teachers were often slotted into the first available vacancy. 

When the suit was initially filed in 2014, DPS superintendent Tom Boasberg defended the mutual consent law, saying a return to the old ways would be harmful for students in high-poverty schools.

“The practice of forced placement is wrong. It is wrong for our students, wrong for our teachers and wrong for our schools,” he toldChalkbeat. “It is particularly harmful because it disproportionately impacts our highest-poverty schools where our kids have the greatest need for excellent teachers.”

Ann Marie Awad's journalistic career has seen her zigzag around the United States, finally landing on Colorado. Before she trekked to this neck of the woods, she was a reporter and Morning Edition host for WRKF in Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capitol. In a former life, she was a reporter in New York City. Originally, she's from Buffalo, so she'll be the judge of whether or not your chicken wings are up to snuff, thank you very much.