Francis Howell EA takes pride
in big legal win for member rights
Four years ago, August 2002, with MNEA legal
assistance from attorney Loretta Haggard, Francis Howell EA
filed a lawsuit against the Francis Howell School District,
charging that the district had violated its own board policy
when it inappropriately charged the district’s teachers
for sick days used during the 2001-2002 school year.
The crux of the lawsuit was that, in an effort to save money
during a financial crisis, the district had not funded the
sick-leave substitute account as prescribed in policy. Then
when the district drained the fund, spending money in the
red, administrators did not calculate the payback amounts
correctly. The outcome—the district assessed teachers
huge amounts of money never intended by the policy.
The district imposed this outrageous assessment by simply
deducting the payback from teachers’ checks—in
many cases, hundreds of dollars were taken from teachers who
were in life-crisis situations—battling critical illnesses,
undergoing chemotherapy treatments or dealing with severely
ill children or spouses. FHEA worked diligently to find a
reasonable and fair resolution with the district. When all
efforts failed, legal action was the only recourse.
We were warned that lawsuits take a long time, require perseverance
and lots of hard work. Those warnings were correct. We had
starts and stops, depositions and mountains of documents.
We had a terrible working relationship with our former superintendent
and our previous school board. Then we went back and forth
with offers for settlement. At one point, the former superintendent
and board told us they would be willing to give teachers still
teaching in our district some sick days for their personal
bank if we would settle out of court, but they would never
pay out any money, and they certainly would never pay anything
to teachers who over the four-year period had left the district.
FHEA did not give up. Our association refused to let any
member down or sell out any former member.
In October, FHEA building representatives personally delivered
more than $96,000 in checks to FHEA members at their buildings,
in addition to the checks that were mailed to former members
who no longer teach in the Francis Howell School District.
Five hundred seventy eight checks went to FHEA members—no
checks went to non members.
That’s a real WIN for FHEA and MNEA!
by Linda Hess
Francis Howell EA president
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