The opinion
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as
Jones v. Kent City School Dist. Bd. of Edn., Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-2844.]
NOTICE
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an
advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to
promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65
South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other
formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before
the opinion is published.
SLIP OPINION NO. 2024-OHIO-2844
JONES, APPELLEE , v. KENT CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF EDUCATION,
APPELLANT.
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it
may be cited as Jones v. Kent City School Dist. Bd. of Edn., Slip Opinion No.
2024-Ohio-2844.]
Civil law—R.C. 3319.11—R.C. 3319.111—When considering nonrenewal of a
teacher’s limited teaching contract under R.C. 3319.11(E), school board
must conduct three observations of the teacher being actually engaged in
teaching to comply with the teacher-evaluation procedures set forth in
R.C. 3319.111(E)—Judgment affirmed and cause remanded.
(No. 2023-0376—Submitted December 13, 2023—Decided July 31, 2024.)
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Portage County,
No. 2021-P-0094, 2023-Ohio-265.
__________________
BRUNNER, J., authored the opinion of the court, which KENNEDY, C.J., and
DEWINE, DONNELLY, STEWART, and DETERS, JJ., joined. FISCHER, J., dissented
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO
and would dismiss the appeal as having been improvidently accepted.
BRUNNER, J.
{¶ 1} Ohio teachers who are employed under a limited contract are entitled
to certain statutory procedures before a school board may decide to discontinue
their employment. See R.C. 3319.11 and 3319.111. School boards and teachers’
unions are free to establish local standards for following the required statutory
procedures, but school boards are still required to follow the mandatory procedures
established by the General Assembly, R.C. 3319.111(A), and the statutory
requirements prevail over any conflicting terms of a collective-bargaining
agreement, R.C. 3319.111(H).
{¶ 2} Appellant, Kent City School District Board of Education (“the
board”), was required under R.C. 3319.111(E) to provide appellee, Shawn Jones,
with three formal observations before making the decision not to renew his limited
teaching contract. The parties dispute whether the board’s third observation in this
case was sufficient, because it consisted only of the evaluator’s attending a remote
meeting of Jones’s students, which Jones could not attend because of a medical
condition. R.C. 3319.111(E) requires the board to conduct “at least three formal
observations of each teacher who is under consideration for nonrenewal” of a
limited contract. Because Jones was not observed during the evaluator’s third
observation, we conclude that the board did not comply with R.C. 3319.111(E), and
we affirm the Eleventh District Court of Appeals’ judgment ordering the board to
reinstate Jones. We remand this matter to the Portage County Court of Common
Pleas for purposes of calculating Jones’s back pay.
I. BACKGROUND
{¶ 3} Under R.C. 3319.111(E), school boards “shall require at least three
formal observations” of any teacher employed under a limited contract if the school
board is considering nonrenewal of that contract. A “limited contract” for teachers
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is a contract for a term of up to five years. R.C. 3319.11(A)(2) and 3319.08(C)(3).
A teacher employed under a limited contract is presumed to be reemployed for
another term at the end of the existing contract; the teacher’s employment can be
nonrenewed only if the school board has complied with the evaluation procedures
in R.C. 3319.111 and the superintendent recommends the teacher’s nonrenewal in
writing. R.C. 3319.11(E).
{¶ 4} Jones was hired by the board to teach during the 2019-2020 school
year. Jones had previously taught in Kent City Schools for 20 years. He and the
board entered into a limited contract for one school year, and Jones began teaching
communications technology at Stanton Middle School in fall 2019.
{¶ 5} In October 2019, Jones was issued an unpaid three-day suspension for
leaving the school building before the end of the school day on six days without
notifying the administration and for failing to fulfill his duties on early-release days
and teacher workdays. Jones admitted that he often left the building with the
students and other teachers at 2:40 p.m. when the students were released, even
though as a teacher, he was required to stay until 2:45 p.m. He also admitted that
he left early on early-release days and teacher workdays but contended that he still
completed his work.
{¶ 6} On Monday, January 6, 2020, Jones did not appear for work and did
not appropriately schedule a substitute or notify his administrators that he would be
absent. Jones was notified in a letter from the assistant superintendent, Thomas
Larkin, that he would be placed on a “full cycle OTES evaluation” for his
unscheduled absence on January 6, which left his class unsupervised.
{¶ 7} The “full cycle OTES” referred to in Larkin’s letter to Jones was a
reference to the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System, a model evaluation process
developed by the Ohio Department of Education, which was the process used by
the board to comply with R.C. 3319.111(E). The collective-bargaining agreement
between the board and the teachers’ union (“the CBA”) provided for establishing a
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committee to develop specific procedures to follow for teacher evaluations. And
the board and the union apparently agreed to use the OTES model for this purpose.
{¶ 8} Jones submitted a letter to Larkin in response to the notice that he was
being considered for nonrenewal. He explained that he was very ill on Sunday,
January 5, when he checked into the system to request the day off and secure a
substitute for January 6. He was notified by the system that a substitute teacher had
picked up his request, but he did not realize that he had actually put in a substitute-
teacher request for the following Monday, January 13. Jones did not realize the
mistake until he returned to school on Tuesday, January 7, the day after his
unscheduled absence.
{¶ 9} The board proceeded to conduct the three required observations. The
first took place on January 29. An evaluator attended Jones’s sixth-grade
communications-technology class and observed Jones’s teaching for approximately
40 minutes. Jones and the evaluator had met for a pre-observation conference on
January 27, and following the observation, Jones received feedback from the
evaluator.
{¶ 10} Before a second observation could be conducted, the process was
disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The General Assembly recognized the
difficulties caused by the transition from in-person to remote learning and enacted
2020 Am.Sub.H.B. No. 197 (“H.B. 197”) to allow school districts to forgo any
evaluations required under R.C. Ch. 3319 if it was impossible or impracticable to
complete them. School boards electing to forgo evaluations were required to
reemploy those teachers. See H.B. 197, Section 17(M).
{¶ 11} The board did not elect to forgo its observations of Jones. In March
2020, it entered into a memorandum of understanding with the teachers’ union (“the
MOU”) that allowed teacher observations to “be completed virtually through
distance learning means in a manner agreed upon by the Assistant Superintendent
and the [teachers’ union] President.” The MOU specified that the evaluator would
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submit a written evaluation report by May 22 “[b]ased upon observation and walk-
through data available.” The MOU did not alter any other teacher-observation
procedures, and if the board decided to not renew Jones’s contract, it was still
required under R.C. 3319.11(E) to provide Jones with written notice of nonrenewal
by June 1.
{¶ 12} It is unclear from the record what efforts, if any, the board made to
complete its observations of Jones after the first observation was conducted on
January 29, but its second observation of Jones did not occur until May 1. Jones
had a pre-observation conference with the evaluator, who then watched a video of
a remote-learning period in which Jones was teaching his students. The evaluator
noted that the observation lasted 30 minutes. Jones then had a postobservation
conference with the evaluator, during which they discussed scheduling the next
observation.
{¶ 13} The board’s third observation of Jones was scheduled for another
distance-learning session on May 11. However, Jones woke up that morning with
chest pains and went to the hospital. He spent the day in the hospital and was
medically excused from work by his doctor until June 1.
{¶ 14} On May 15, the evaluator attended a remote-learning session in
which Jones’s students met to discuss their progress on an assigned project. Jones
was not present during this session.
{¶ 15} At a board meeting on May 19—before the deadline for the evaluator
to submit her final report—the board considered the superintendent’s
recommendation to not renew Jones’s contract. The board unanimously approved
the nonrenewal recommendation, and Jones was notified of that decision in a letter
dated May 20. On May 28, the evaluator submitted a final-summative-rating report
regarding Jones’s effectiveness as a teacher. The evaluator rated Jones at the
overall highest level: “Accomplished.”
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{¶ 16} Jones exercised his right to a hearing before the board under R.C.
3319.11(E) and (G). Following the hearing, the board entered executive session
and voted to affirm its decision not to renew Jones’s contract.
{¶ 17} Jones appealed the board’s decision to the Portage County Court of
Common Pleas under R.C. 3319.11(G)(7). Nothing in the record indicates that
Jones was required to exercise any separate grievance or appeal procedures through
his contractual obligations under the CBA. Jones argued to the common pleas court
that the board did not complete the required statutory process before deciding to
not renew his contract, because the third evaluation did not involve a pre-
observation or postobservation conference and the evaluator failed to observe Jones
engaging his students in learning. The common pleas court issued a judgment entry
affirming the board’s nonrenewal decision. Jones appealed to the Eleventh District,
which reversed the common pleas court’s judgment.
{¶ 18} The court of appeals found nothing in the CBA, the MOU, or the
OTES model that permitted the board to change the terms of the teacher-evaluation
procedures that are statutorily required. See 2023-Ohio-265, ¶ 23-24 (11th Dist.).
The court of appeals concluded that the evaluator did not conduct any observation
of Jones’s teaching during her attendance at the students’ virtual meeting on May
15 and that the board therefore failed to comply with the requirements of R.C.
3319.111. 2023-Ohio-265 at ¶ 35 (11th Dist.).
{¶ 19} We accepted the board’s appeal for discretionary review. See 2023-
Ohio-1830. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the court of appeals’ judgment
and remand the matter to the common pleas court for calculation of Jones’s back
pay.
II. ANALYSIS
A. Judicial review under R.C. 3319.11(G)(7)
{¶ 20} Jones was entitled to judicial review of the board’s nonrenewal
decision under R.C. 3319.11(G)(7), which provides:
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January Term, 2024
A teacher may appeal an order affirming the intention of the
board not to reemploy the teacher to the court of common pleas of
the county in which the largest portion of the territory of the school
district or service center is located, within thirty days of the date on
which the teacher receives the written decision, on the grounds that
the board has not complied with this section or section 3319.111 of
the Revised Code.
{¶ 21} R.C. 3319.11(G)(7) limits judicial review “to the determination of
procedural errors.” Therefore, we are not concerned with the reasons behind the
board’s decision to not renew Jones’s contract. We may examine only whether the
board complied with the teacher-evaluation procedures required under
R.C. 3319.111. See Snyder v. Mendon-Union Local School Dist. Bd. of Edn., 75
Ohio St.3d 69, 73 (1996).
{¶ 22} The board argues that the CBA controls Jones’s claims, thus
precluding judicial review. However, the board does not fully develop or
adequately support this contention. Moreover, the terms of R.C. 3319.11 “prevail
over any conflicting provisions of a collective bargaining agreement.” R.C.
3319.111(H).
B. The required teacher-evaluation procedures under R.C. 3319.111
{¶ 23} The operative statutory language at issue in this case is found in
R.C. 3319.111(E), which states that “the board shall require at least three formal
observations of each teacher who is under consideration for nonrenewal.”
{¶ 24} Jones argues that the board did not comply with this statute, because
he was not present for the observation on May 15. Jones argues that a virtual
session in which his students met to discuss their work on an assignment was not
an observation of his teaching.
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{¶ 25} In the appeals before the common pleas court and the court of
appeals, the board asserted that it had complied with the CBA, the MOU, and the
OTES model, arguing in part—and incorrectly—that the procedures for teacher
evaluations set forth in those documents superseded the process required under R.C.
3319.11(E). The board argued in the courts below that it conducted three formal
observations of Jones and that the relevant consideration was whether the third
observation was, in fact, a “formal” one. The board continues to argue before this
court that because the OTES permits a formal observation to be a “visitation of a
class period or viewing of a class lesson,” the evaluator did what was required under
R.C. 3319.11(E) when conducting the May 15 observation.
{¶ 26} But it is the language of the statutes that control, not what the parties
may have agreed to in the CBA, in the MOU, or by the adoption of the OTES model
for teacher evaluations and observations. The plain language of R.C. 3319.111(E)
requires three “observations of [the] teacher who is under consideration for
nonrenewal.” And this is without exception. See Skilton v. Perry Local School
Dist. Bd. of Edn., 2004-Ohio-2239, ¶ 11 (“[A] teacher’s medical leave of absence
does not excuse a school board from complying with R.C. 3319.111. To hold
otherwise would ignore the clear language of R.C. 3319.111 . . . .”). It is
undisputed that during the students’ virtual session on May 15, the evaluator may
have observed the students, but she did not observe Jones, i.e., the “teacher who
[was] under consideration for nonrenewal,” R.C. 3319.111(E).
{¶ 27} Further, we need not address whether the board’s third observation
was “formal” under R.C. 3319.111(E). Regardless of the formalities, Jones was
not observed three times. The definition of “formal observation” that the board
would have us adopt—a visitation of a class period or viewing of a class lesson—
does not satisfy the statutory requirement that the teacher in question be observed.
{¶ 28} Our holding that the statutes at issue here require actual observation
of the teacher teaching is nothing new. Previous versions of these laws have been
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similarly worded, and we have explained that when a teacher evaluation requires
“‘[o]bservation of the teacher,’ ” it requires just that, Farmer v. Kellys Island Bd.
of Edn., 69 Ohio St.3d 156, 159 (1994), quoting former R.C. 3319.111(B).
Therefore, setting aside any importance the word “formal” may have in otherwise
explaining how teacher observations are to be conducted, we conclude that the
board did not comply with R.C. 3319.11(E) and 3319.111(E), because it failed to
conduct three observations of Jones teaching.
The failure of the board to comply with the observation
requirements of [R.C. 3319.111(E)] constitutes a failure to comply
with the evaluation requirements of [R.C. 3319.11(E)]. Such a
failure constitutes a ground upon which a court reverses the board’s
decision not to reemploy [the teacher who was under consideration
for nonrenewal] under R.C. 3319.11(G)(7).
Farmer at 160.
{¶ 29} We are mindful that because Jones was medically excused from
work by his doctor from May 11 through June 1, it was not possible for the board
to observe him and make a decision about his reemployment before the June 1
deadline set forth in R.C. 3319.11(E). We also recognize the unique challenges and
uncertainties that schools faced in spring 2020 as a result of the transition from in-
person to remote learning occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. But we are
bound to apply the unambiguous language of R.C. 3319.111(E). Therefore, in
accord with our history of ordering reinstatement to enforce compliance with
R.C. 3319.11(G)(7), we order the board to reinstate Jones. See Snyder, 75 Ohio
St.3d at 73; Naylor v. Cardinal Local School Dist. Bd. of Edn., 69 Ohio St.3d 162,
169 (1994); see also Farmer at 160.
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III. CONCLUSION
{¶ 30} We agree with the court of appeals that the common pleas court
abused its discretion in affirming the board’s decision to not renew Jones’s limited
contract when the board failed to comply with R.C. 3319.111(E)’s requirement that
it first conduct three formal observations of Jones as the teacher being considered
for nonrenewal. We therefore affirm the Eleventh District Court of Appeals’
judgment and, pursuant to R.C. 3319.11(E) and (G)(7), order the board to reinstate
Jones. We remand this matter to the Portage County Court of Common Pleas for
further proceedings consistent with this decision, including calculation of Jones’s
back pay.
Judgment affirmed
and cause remanded.
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Milligan Pusateri Co., L.P.A., Daniel D. Eisenbrei, and Haley M. Walker;
and Malarcik, Pierce, Munyer & Will, and Donald J. Malarcik, for appellee.
Jackson Lewis, P.C., Patrick O. Peters, and Jackson E. Biesecker, for
appellant.
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