San Juan Teachers Ass'n v. San Juan Unified School District

FRIEDMAN, Acting P. J.

I concur in part, dissent in part. The Winton Act contains a number of large verbal abstractions which give the appearance but not the reality of concrete solutions. For example, after expressing a broad purpose “to afford [teacher organizations] a voice in the formulation of educational policy” (§ 13080), the act demands that school trustees meet and confer with these organizations “with regard to procedures relating to the definition of educational objectives, the determination of the content of courses and curricula, the selection of textbooks, and other aspects of the instructional program ....” (§ 13085.) Relatively narrow employee participation in procedures is hardly coextensive with broad participation in policy. Similar examples of linguistic looseness abound.

*261 Statutory generalizations of this sort have the earmarks of verbal compromises between contending special interests. They allow a legislative escape from controversy and send the contending interests out into the administrative arena and from thence into already overburdened courts. Conventional tenets of statutory interpretation fall flat in the face of such draftsmanship. Hence, conflicting interpretations must be tentative and respectful.

The Winton Act seems to demarcate a number of separate functional areas, granting employee organizations a participatory interest in some, excluding them from others. The majority opinion, in my view, fails to observe these demarcations and indulges in a blending which extends employee participation into decisional concerns not intended by the Legislature.

An amicus brief filed by the California School Boards Association urges that the scope of representation granted employee organizations by Education Code sections 13083 and 13084 is not relevant in ascertaining the extent of the “meet and confer” provisions of section 13085. The majority opinion correctly rejects that contention. There is no sense in a labor relations statute which mandates a sphere of representation, then excludes the employee organization from any right to negotiate within part of that sphere.

In the case of San Juan Unified School District, I agree: (1) that the district’s rules and regulations couldn’t and didn’t enlarge the statutory area of labor-management negotiations; (2) that the “master agreement” demanded by the San Juan Teachers Association was an unjustified attempt to impose an illegal collective bargaining contract on the school board; (3) that the school trustees had no optional authority to enter into collective bargaining contracts; (4) that the character of the school counselling program affected employment conditions of teachers, hence lay within the mandatory negotiation provision of section 13085; (5) that the school trustees could not refuse to “meet and confer” in an effort to define the scope of negotiations.

I dissent from the majority’s approval of the declaratory judgment’s statement that “all matters relating to the implementation” of the school counselling program were subject to compulsory negotiation. At this point the trial court simply repeated the fuzzy language of the statute. At this point the majority err by delineating too wide a scope for compulsory negotiations. For example, formulation of qualifications of *262 school counselors is a lawful subject of mandatory, teacher-management consultations; selection among individual counselling applicants is not. Thus the phrase “all matters” in the judgment is too broad to be sustained.

At one point the trial court granted a preliminary injunction which directed the school board to employ counselors with educational qualifications prescribed by the injunction. The injunction is outside the scope of this appeal. Nevertheless, I do not wish to imply approval by silence. Nothing in the law authorizes a superior court judge to fix the educational qualifications of applicants for school district employment.

As to the Yuba City Unified School District case, I agree generally with the majority opinion up to—but not including—its acceptance of the proposition that a school board must meet and confer with teacher organizations regarding budgetary allocations for educational purposes outside the area of teachers’ salaries and fringe benefits. At this point, the trial court’s judgment and the majority opinion rest upon this shaky thesis—that a decision to buy musical instruments or a school bus diminishes the money available to pay teachers, hence the school board is required to negotiate with the teachers’ organization over the wisdom and necessity of purchasing musical instruments or a school bus. That thesis rests upon, first, an over-broad view of the employment conditions which section 13085 exposes to mandatory negotiation and, second, a refusal to recognize the 1970 amendment to section 13085.

When the Winton Act was adopted in 1965, section 13085 gave teacher organizations a right to negotiate with the school board in two areas. These were described in the following terms: (a) “all matters relating to employment conditions and employer-employee relations” and (b) “all matters relating to . . . the instructional program . . . .” In 1970 section 13085 was amended in several respects. (Stats. 1970, chs. 1412, 1413.) The 1970 amendment did not change the first of the above clauses, but the second was amended to substitute the word “procedures” for the phrase “all matters.” Thus, as amended in 1970, the second of the above two clauses was amended to require negotiations covering “procedures relating to . . . the instructional program.”

A school board makes up an annual budget of proposed expenditures and estimated revenues itemized “by functions and object.” (Ed. Code, §§ 20602, 20603.) The budget may raise money for an “undistributed reserve” covering unforeseen expenditures. (Ed. Code, § 20605.) School *263 districts are limited by tax rate ceilings. (Ed. Code, §§ 20751, 20800.) Given a limited revenue, all expenditure decisions impinge upon one another. Every penny of anticipated revenue devoted to “functions and objects” other than employee compensation diminishes the revenue available for employee compensation. I find nothing in the Winton Act denoting a legislative design to inject employee organizations into the entire gamut of school board budgetary deliberations.

In relating the phrase “all matters relating to employment conditions” to budgetary determinations, it is difficult to articulate a formula for inclusion and exclusion. Generally, of course, this part of the statute embraces appropriations for salaries and fringe benefits. Dealing with a somewhat analogous statute, one court has restricted the scope of compulsory negotiations to those matters having “a significant or material relationship” to wages, hours and other conditions of employment. (Westinghouse Electric Corporation v. N.L.R.B., 387 F.2d 542, 548 ; see also Fibreboard Corp. v. Labor Board, 379 U.S. 203, 223-224 [ 13 L.Ed.2d 233, 245-246 , 85 S.Ct. 398 , 6 A.L.R.3d 1130 ], separate opinion of Stewart, J.) In any event, when the relationship consists of nothing more than the negative effect created by distribution of revenue to other objectives, the decisions are outside the ambit of “matters relating to employment conditions.”

The briefs fail to give precise outline to the clause of section 13085 requiring negotiations “with regard to procedures relating to . . . the instructional program.” The failure is understandable, for the clause is murky and mystifying. Only one aspect of the matter has clarity—in deleting “all matters” at that point of the statute and substituting ^procedures” as the area for compulsory negotiation, the 1970 Legislature distinctly expressed a desire to narrow that area. When the school board decides to spend money for musical instruments or a bus, the decision involves neither “employment conditions” nor “procedures relating to ... the instructional program.” I dissent from the majority view that section 13085 requires compulsory negotiations with teacher organizations in the general area of budget management.

The petitions of all the parties for a hearing by the Supreme Court were denied March 12. 1975. Richardson, J., did not participate therein.