Nashville Metro School Board considers administrative law judges for employee dismissal hearings
The Nashville Metro School Board (NMSB) is considering using administrative law judges (ALJ) to conduct employee dismissal hearings in an effort to save time. Under Tennessee law, any school district employee can request a hearing following notification of dismissal from the superintendent. According to NMSB member Steve Glover, employee hearings take up time the board could spend on other duties. "This is just one portion of what the board is responsible for and a small portion I may add," he says. A recent dismissal hearing has consumed approximately 30 hours of the board’s time. "I do know that Metro has had a lot of teacher dismissal hearings in the last couple of years," says Stephen Smith, government relations director for the Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA). "They’ve really been proactive in trying to get rid of bad teachers … but I know it’s been a tremendous amount of work and hours on the part of the board." Although the ALJ would gather facts and make conclusions of law, the school board would still make the decision. NMSB requested that TSBA include a resolution in the association’s 2007 legislative agenda calling for allowing ALJs to conduct teacher dismissal and suspension hearings. However, that request was rejected by a majority of the member school boards in a vote at TSBA’s annual convention in November. Mr. Smith expresses surprise at the vote and agrees that using ALJs would benefit large urban school districts like Nashville. "We have a lot of systems in the state that really haven’t gone through this process, or if they do, maybe they do one every couple of years," he says. "I know it is an issue for a lot of the larger systems like Memphis and Nashville." NMSB members are discussing whether to present the option to state legislators for the 2007 session.
Nashville City Paper
By Amanda N. Maynord
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