Leaving MNPS Resignations and Avoiding Breach of Contract
If you decide you must resign from MNPS, this is what you need to know:
1. You are required under current law to give 30 calendar days written notice. The day you turn in your resignation is Day 0. Count 30 calendar days—including weekends and holidays, to discover your final date of employment with MNPS.
2. While MNPS may choose to lessen your 30-day notice period, it is their decision, not yours. Once the school year begins, MNPS is more likely to require you to serve the full 30 days as they need the time to find a replacement.
3. Failure to provide the 30 days’ notice will result in a charge of breach of contract (see attached Employment Contracts—read section on “breach of contract”). A breach of contract charge must be reported to the State Board of Education which will act on your teaching license by suspending or revoking your license (see attached Employment Contracts—read section on “licensure actions”) making you ineligible to teach.
4. You should not use sick leave to serve your 30 days. Doing so may be an inappropriate use of sick leave in accordance with current state law. Further, if you are planning to seek employment in another public school district, you can transfer your sick leave. Perhaps most importantly, your unused sick leave counts as service credit in retirement. You don’t want to use your sick leave if you don’t need to.
5. You are not eligible for unemployment benefits if you resign.
6. Your membership will end when your employment ends. Should you find employment in another school district or decide to return to MNPS later, you will need to re-enroll in MNEA (or the local affiliate serving the new school district).
7. Send your resignation notice via email (so you have a time and date stamped document for your records). Your principal will make sure the notice is given to appropriate district-level parties.
8. You will receive communication from the district regarding your last date of employment, your last day to access employee benefits, date of your last paycheck, and any information regarding money that will be deducted from your final paycheck (money owed district, repayment of used but not yet earned sick leave, correction to the % of your salary since your salary is divided evenly over paychecks for the fiscal year, etc.).
A resignation does NOT qualify you for unemployment benefits.
TCA 49-5-508(a) and (b)
(a) A teacher shall give the director of schools notice of resignation at least thirty (30) days’ in advance of the effective date of the resignation. A teacher who fails to give such notice, in the absence of justifiable mitigating circumstances, shall forfeit all tenure status under this part; provided that the board may waive the thirty (30) days’ notice requirement and permit the teacher to resign in good standing.
(b) Any teacher who breaks a contract with a board of education without justifiable reason as listed in subsection
(c) shall not be given permanent tenure status in any other school system in this state, until such teacher has met all the requirements for attaining permanent status plus serving the five (5) continuous years in lieu of the three (3) continuous years required in §49-5-503; provided, that the local board of education against which the teacher has broken a contract informs the commissioner of education of the breach of contract and requests the commissioner to so notify all local boards of education in this state. The local board of education may later inform the commissioner that it is no longer holding the breach of contract against the teacher, in which event the local board of education shall request the commissioner to so notify all local boards of education in this state. If and when the local board of education informs the commissioner that it is no longer holding the breach of contract against the teacher, the penalty in this subsection (b) against the teacher shall immediately become ineffective, null and void.
Job Offer Acceptance
State law governs offer and acceptance for teaching positions. If you are offered a teaching position between April 1 and June 1, you have 14 days to accept the offer in writing. If the offer is made between June 1 and April 1, however, you have only 5 days to accept the offer in writing.
To be at liberty to choose among competing offers, their respective acceptance windows must overlap. If they do not, unfortunately, each offer must be considered according to its unique timeline.
Although state law does not expressly preclude the extension of an acceptance window, ordinarily school districts have little incentive to do so. Bottom line: once an employment offer has been accepted in writing, the teacher is considered employed and subject to the attendant rights, privileges, and obligations provided including the statutory 30-day notice requirement.
Licensure Actions
The Director of Schools is required to report teacher suspensions, dismissals, and resignations to the State Board of Education. If the State Board believes licensure action may be warranted based on the report, a hold is placed on the teacher’s license.
A hold on a license has three impacts: (1) It prevents the teacher from obtaining a job in another school system, since a director is not going to risk hiring someone with a hold on her license. (2) A license cannot be renewed while a hold is pending. (3) And a hold prevents evaluation information from being uploaded to TNCompass. If the State Board recommends licensure action, the staff attorney notifies the teacher in writing. The teacher then has 30 days to request a hearing before an administrative judge to challenge the recommended action.
The State Board of Education can take the following actions against a teacher’s license:
· Denial—Denial is not defined in the definition section of the State Board of Education’s promulgated rule, Rule 0520-02-03-.09, but “denial” refers to the Board’s action in denying either the initial application for a Tennessee educator license or denying a request for renewal of a Tennessee educator license.
· Formal reprimand—A less harsh licensing action than the suspension, revocation, or denial of a license, which admonishes an educator for certain conduct under this rule. An educator who has been reprimanded by the Board will receive a letter from the State Board of Education, which will become part of the educator’s state and local record, indicating that the inappropriate conduct is discouraged and shall be subject to further disciplinary action if repeated.
· Suspension—The nullification of an educator’s license for a predetermined term, after which the license is automatically reinstated. Reinstatement may be subject to the completion of terms and conditions contained in the order of suspension.
· Revocation—The nullification of an educator’s license for a period of at least five (5) years, after which an educator may petition the State Board for reinstatement.
The State Board of Education can act on your licensure for any of the following reasons:
· Conviction of a felony
· Conviction of possession of illegal drugs
· Being on school premises, at a school-related activity involving students, or on official school business,
· while possessing or consuming alcohol or illegal drugs
· Falsification or altering of a license or documentation required for licensure
· Inappropriate physical contact with a student
· Denial, suspension, or revocation of a license or certificate in another jurisdiction for reasons which would justify denial, suspension, or revocation under this rule
· Other good cause—Conduct that calls into question the fitness of an educator to hold a license including, but not limited to, noncompliance with security guidelines for Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment
· Program (TCAP) or successor tests pursuant to T.C.A. § 49-1-607, failure to report licensure actions as required under paragraph (2), or violation of any provision in the Teacher Code of Ethics as contained in T.C.A. §§ 49-5-1001, et seq.
If you’re a member in good standing of the National Education Association, the Tennessee Education Association, and your local association, you will be assigned an attorney who will guide you through the process and will represent you in a hearing before an administrative judge.
Membership
Don’t forget that your membership doesn’t transfer from one school district to another. Once you leave the employment of a school district, the local association will cancel your membership. You will need to rejoin the Association in your new school district to ensure that you continue to receive all the benefits of membership.
Don’t delay rejoining the Association. If you delay and have a gap in your membership, you may not be eligible for some benefits, such as legal services.