A three-judge panel in the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled (PDF) that substitute teachers have neither probationary status nor tenure eligibility under Illinois law. That is, any time they spend as a substitute teacher, even as a full-time sub, can’t be considered as working toward any requirement to award tenure.
The case involves a woman who worked as a full-time sub in a Chicago elementary school, followed by three years as a probationary teacher in the district. She was dismissed, she says illegally and not for cause, after her fourth year in front of a Chicago classroom.
Candace Harbaugh spent the 2003-04 school year as a full-time substitute teacher at James G Blaine Elementary School, a school in the Chicago Public Schools district. CPS eliminated the full-time substitute classification the following year, and Ms Harbaugh was reclassified as a probationary teacher. When her classification was changed, CPS told her that after she satisfactorily completed four years of probationary teaching, she would have tenure at the beginning of her fifth year in CPS.
She completed the 2004-05 school year at Blaine, after which her contract was not renewed. After a year off, she was hired at Mather High School as a probationary teacher for the 2005-06 school year. She also taught there for the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years.
In March 2008, the second school’s principal said her contract shouldn’t be renewed for the 2008-09 school year, and following the principal’s recommendation, the school board dismissed her. Then she couldn’t find a teaching job at any other school in the district.
Under Illinois law and according to collective bargaining agreements, the school board would have to show cause for firing her if she had tenure. She sued the board, alleging that she had taught in the district for five years and had thus achieved tenure. Furthermore, since she had tenure and CPS had not provided her with any 14th Amendment due process protections, including the right to a hearing, she said her dismissal was illegal.
The district court ruled that her claim that the year of full-time subbing should count toward her tenure had no basis in the law. Ms Harbaugh appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which agreed with the district court.
Yes, justices said, her duties, responsibilities, and salary as a full-time substitute in Chicago mirrored those as a probationary teacher, but Illinois law distinguishes in several places between full-time subs and probationary teachers in terms of employment, certification, firing, and hiring:
- Full-time substitute teachers are one of “two kinds of non-tenure track teachers [… who] work at one school full time just like tenure track teachers only with less seniority and without potential job security.”
- Statute requires that probationary teachers receive more guidance on the job.
- Certification requirements for probationary teachers are more rigorous than for substitutes.
Harbaugh v. Bd. of Educ. of Chi., No. 11-3277 (7th Cir. May 17, 2013)