Hodge v. Board of Education

BARNARD, P. J.

This is an appeal from a judgment ordering a peremptory writ of mandate to issue commanding the appellants to reinstate the respondent as a permanent teacher in the San Bernardino Senior High School at a named salary for the 1936-37 school year.

The respondent was employed as a teacher in the department of physical education in the Senior High School in San Bernardino continuously from the school year 1926-27 to the year 1935-36, and had acquired the status of a permanent teacher. During the last eight years of that time he had also served, in a supervisory eapaeit;'-, as head of the department of physical education in that high school and had received an extra compensation therefor. During the school year of 1935-36 he received a salary of $2,550. Early in May, 1936, the appellants decided, in the interest of harmony and efficiency, to change the respondent’s assignment and, after due proceedings, the respondent was notified that he was relieved of his supervisory duties, that he was assigned for the ensuing year as a teacher of physical education in the Junior High School operated by said district, and that his salary was fixed for that year at $2,200. At the opening of the school year of 1936-37 the respondent presented himself and offered to teach physical education in the Senior High School but declined to serve as such a teacher in the Junior High School. He was not allowed to teach in the Senior High School and this action followed.

With respect to the main question involved the appellants contend that a school board is empowered to assign duties to a permanent teacher, that the assignment of the

[343]

respondent to teach in the Junior High School was in conformity with this power, and that there is no evidence that he was demoted or reduced in rank or grade. The respondent had acquired a position as permanent teacher from which he could not be removed without cause. As was said in

Cullen

v.

Board of Education,

126 Cal. App. 510 [15 Pac. (2d) 227, 228, 16 Pac. (2d) 272] : “This right of tenure is a right which the teacher enjoys to continue in the position or positions to which he has become elected under the statute— i. e., in a position or positions of a rank and grade equivalent to that occupied for the probationary period and to which the teacher has thus become ‘elected’ under the statute.” The “position” through which the respondent’s right of tenure was acquired ivas that of teaching physical education in the Senior High School. The real question before us is whether the teaching of physical education in a junior high school operated by this district may be considered as a part of the same position in which the respondent acquired tenure, or as one of an equivalent rank and grade.