Gentner v. Board of Education of Los Angeles City High School District

SEAWELL, J.

Petitioner John Gentner appeals from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County denying a writ of mandate to compel the Board of Education of the Los Angeles City High School District to reinstate him as a permanent teacher in said district.

It is undisputed that petitioner had acquired the status of a “permanent” teacher in the Los Angeles City High School District under our Teachers’ Tenure Law. The Board of Education of said district refused to assign him to a position for the school term commencing September 12, 1927. On October 24, 1927, Susan M. Dorsey, as superintendent of schools for the city of Los Angeles, filed with said board charges of petitioner’s incompetence and evident unfitness for teaching, the charges were set for hearing on

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November 14, 1927, and on November 16, 1927, the board ordered petitioner dismissed. He thereafter applied to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for a writ of mandate to compel his reinstatement, and upon denial of the writ appealed to the District Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District. Division Two of that court affirmed the judgment.

In petitioning for a hearing in this court, petitioner urged that the hearing be granted only as to the two propositions which the appellate court failed to discuss in its opinion, to wit, petitioner’s right to salary from the opening of the fall term on September 12, 1927, to his formal dismissal on November 16, 1927, and his contention that the findings of the trial court were fatally contradictory. Except for his assertion of inconsistency in the findings, which we hereafter show to be without merit, petitioner has now virtually abandoned his claim to reinstatement. Aside from this, the grounds urged for reinstatement are insufficient. The charges filed against petitioner with the Board of Education of the City High School District, and embodied in the return filed to the alternative writ of mandate in the superior court, sufficiently allege incompetence and evident unfitness for service, which are statutory grounds for dismissal. (Sec. 1609, subd. 5j, Pol. Code, now sec. 5.661, School Code.) Although certain of the charges and findings relate to acts of petitioner more than three years before the filing of charges, which petitioner contends are too remote and are barred by the statute of limitations (see. 338, subd. 1, Code Civ. Proc.), other charges and findings as to more recent conduct sustain the judgment. In view of the fact that the evidence adduced before the trial court and Board of Education is not embodied in the record on appeal, it must be presumed that the evidence supports the findings.