Zimmer, Duncan & Cole

28 Degrees of Termination

Southeast Technical Institute got a black eye in 2007 when its administrators discovered that the school had mistakenly awarded diplomas to 28 students who hadn't earned them.
At the center of the controversy was the school's employee, Matt Onnen. The two sides ended up in court in a case called Matt Onnen v. Sioux Falls Independent School District (2011 S.D. 45).
The concept of "two weeks' notice" is a mostly a courtesy, not a requirement.
The vast majority of South Dakota employees are considered "at-will". That means they can be fired at any time, for almost any reason, or for no reason whatsoever. If you want any sort of job security, you'll need an employment contract.
Matt Onnen had yearly, written contracts for his position with the school district.
After two years on the staff of Southeast Tech, Matt Onnen was promoted to the position of registrar.
As registrar, he was in charge of maintaining the school's permanent records, including student grades for each class. He was also responsible for checking to see that students had met the graduation requirements before receiving a diploma.
Two years into Matt's new position, his supervisor discovered that a student had received a diploma without meeting all of the requirements.
He investigated and found 13 students who had improperly received degrees. Even worse, he discovered that Matt knew about the issue two months earlier, but failed to tell his boss.
Instead, Matt called some of the affected students to tell them. But he didn't keep a list of who he talked to.
Matt was suspended for three days with pay for a further investigation. Southeast Tech then discovered fifteen other students who had improperly received degrees.
In addition, they discovered another forty students who were entitled to a degree, but had not received one.
Matt was fired immediately. The administrators said that Onnen had refused to take responsibility for his major mistakes and failed to help fix the situation after it was discovered.
At the time, Matt was in the middle of a one-year employment contract with the school. The agreement contained a section that allowed Southeast Tech to terminate Matt "for cause".
Southeast Tech claimed these actions were "cause", and then forwarded their decision on to the Sioux Falls School Board for approval.
Although they are run like colleges, the vo-tech schools in South Dakota are part of local school districts, rather than the university system. Decisions to hire and fire are ultimately the responsibility of the elected school board.
Matt appealed his termination and asked the School District to reconsider.
Any school board decision can be appealed into circuit court. (The circuit court is the one held at your local county courthouse.)
The court then holds a trial, with witnesses, but no jury, and evaluates the school board's decision.
In general, courts do not like to second-guess school boards. If they made a habit of it, courts would see a flood of disgruntled parents, students, teachers, and taxpayers. In addition, this would put judges in the position of making education decisions, rather than the community's elected leaders.
However, we know that school boards do make mistakes from time to time, so there has to be some method to review their decision.
In order to strike the right balance, courts use a two-part test. First, a judge investigates whether the school board followed the correct procedure to arrive at its decision.
Second, the decision itself is evaluated, but it won't be overturned unless it was an "abuse of discretion". This means that as long as the court can see a sensible reason why a school board would have acted this way, the decision will stand.
Here, the trial court determined that the school board followed all the right procedures, and that Matt's conduct fell short of what he promised in his written contract.
After the trial court made its decision, Matt's attorney asked for a new trial based on a minor bit of drama that occurred during the trial.
Apparently, shortly before he testified, one of the school district's major witnesses contacted the judge on Facebook, and wished him happy birthday.
Although there could be an appearance of favoritism resulting from this, the trial court and then the Supreme Court decided this wasn't enough to justify a new trial.
The school board's decision will stand.