The North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned a law passed in 2013 that was intended to eliminate tenure. The court said the law was unconstitutional.
Sharon McCloskey of the Progressive Pulse in North Carolina writes:
The General Assembly’s 2013 repeal of the teacher tenure law amounted to an unconstitutional taking of contract and property rights as to those teachers who’d already attained that status, according to a Court of Appeals opinion released this morning.
Writing for the court, Judge Linda Stephens said:
[W]e cannot escape the conclusion that for the last four decades, the career status protections provided by section 115C- 325, the very title of which—“Principal and Teacher Employment Contracts”— purports to govern teachers’ employment contracts, have been a fundamental part of the bargain that Plaintiffs and thousands of other teachers across this State accepted when they decided to defer the pursuit of potentially more lucrative professions, as well as the opportunity to work in states that offer better financial compensation to members of their own profession, in order to accept employment in our public schools.
The ruling by the three-judge panel affirms Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood’s decision handed down a little over a year ago.
Under North Carolina’s “Career Status Law,” teachers in their first four years were deemed “probationary” and employed year-to-year under annual contracts. At the end of the four-year period, they became eligible for career status, giving them rights to continuing contracts and due process protections from arbitrary or unjustified dismissals.
In summer 2013, lawmakers enacted a repeal of that law in an effort to rid the state of tenure by 2018, saying that it enabled bad teachers to stay in the system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow…this is huge and could impact how other states (like New York) proceed. Maybe we will get back to being treated like a profession yet!
It’s good, but I don’t think it’s huge.
“As an enticement for already-tenured teachers to act sooner, lawmakers also required local school boards to offer 25 percent of them temporary 4-year contracts with annual raises of $500 in exchange for giving up their tenure rights early.
In May 2014, Judge Hobgood ruled that the revoking of tenure for teachers who’d already reached career status was unconstitutional, as was the “25 percent” plan, which Hobgood said included no standards to guide school districts and served no public purpose.
As to teachers who had not yet achieved career status, though, Hobgood found that they had no protectable contract rights and thus could not challenge the repeal.”
They were trying to repeal contract rights retroactively. They can’t do that. They also can’t offer the “500 dollars bonus plan” because there’s no way to determine who should be eligible for it. I can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would trade 500 dollars for regular salary increases, but maybe they need a car battery or new tires or something. Once they get the car running they can use it to leave North Carolina! 🙂
It’s just as race to the bottom as it was before. Once they chase out the higher wage teachers with tenure they’ll replace them with the new lower wage set.
– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/06/02/just-in-court-of-appeals-says-repeal-of-nc-tenure-law-is-unconstitutional/#sthash.PCzdazHd.dpuf
well 14,000 teachers left in 2013, so we always have to remember that. Anything we weigh on reactions now should always be held against that factor.
For example, our teachers gave input on whether or not to change our standards since we dumped Common Core and teachers said, “stay the course.” But of course, 14,000 teachers disliked it enough to leave. . .so even though I do think it makes fiscal sense to stay the course, I think we should always remember the damage that has already been done and keep it in mind.
Were they retiring early? I felt as if Kasch’s anti-public employee law was a pretty transparent effort to get rid of older people.
They cost more.
Chiara,
some; but many, many left the state or went abroad to teach or left teaching.
I wonder how this will affect the Vergara ripple effect . . . . ?
Send that court decision over to Wisconsin…let the court proceedings begin (in Madison!).
At least some good news for educators and education.
It’s good, yes, but not when you look at the big picture. This decision only protects those veteran teachers who remain in their current district. If they choose to move to a different district, they lose their career status (tenure) and cannot regain it because NC no longer grants career status to new teachers or to any teacher moving districts.
The courts are the only thing standing between rights and the General Assembly in NC and I appreciate their following the letter of the law in instance after instance.
We still need to demand more from the legislators, who, as Chiara says above, are doing everything they can to continue NC’s race to the bottom.
How would this effect teachers who are placed on unpaid leave because their school closed? They were not let go of and they did not give up their contract. Hmmm…….
Steps in the right direction are better than none at all.Legislative relief is hard to come by ns until we organize parents and community organizations to work with us, nothing will change. Our public schools are battlegrounds for ideologues in conjunction with the major donors who fund this madness. Both parties. This battle will eventually be won in the streets where real democracy flourishes.