Board of Dir. of Ames Cmty. Sch. Dist., No. 05-1059 (Iowa Feb. 29, 2008)
The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that a school board had “just cause” for terminating a high school basketball coach’s contract. From the beginning of his coaching tenure in 1997, Dennis Cullinan of Ames Community School District (ACSD) was the subject of complaints, in particular about his threatening and intimidating treatment of players and use of profanity. These came to a head in 2002 when 15 families presented school officials with a packet of materials, under the title “Parents of Ames High Basketball Players v. Dennis Cullinan.” Following an investigation, ACSD issued a remediation plan that provided: “It is critical that in the future, when handling or dealing with acute individual student-athlete corrections, that these corrections must be: Done away from the group setting or directed to the group as a whole [and] [d]one in the presence of an assistant coach or in the presence of the student’s counselor or parent.” In December 2003 Mr. Cullinan conducted a one-on-one meeting with a player in apparent violation of the remediation plan. A complaint by the player and investigations led the superintendent to recommend terminating the coaching contract, which the school board unanimously approved after a hearing. Mr. Cullinan appealed to an adjudicator, who reversed the board’s decision. ACSD appealed to a trial court, which upheld the adjudicator, and then to the Iowa Court of Appeals, which affirmed the trial court.
The state supreme court vacated the Court of Appeals decision, reversed the trial court, and remanded the case. The high court first addressed whether the scope of the school board’s inquiry as to the just cause for the termination should have been limited to the December 2003 incident, as the adjudicator had ruled. While this incident was the “proverbial straw that broke the camels’ back,” the court rejected this narrow scope of inquiry, noting that the board’s termination order made clear that it was based on Mr. Cullinan’s entire history as coach. The superintendent’s two reasons for recommending termination to the school board—“[f]ailure to effectively lead the program [and] ... [t]o adequately remediate leadership deficiencies in [the] program”—had been established, the court found, and the broad scope of the just cause inquiry was consistent with Iowa case law. The court rejected the coach’s argument that the board’s consideration of his entire coaching tenure constituted “unfair surprise.” He had been informed throughout his tenure of the need to exhibit respect for the players, the court observed, and he was notified that the grounds for his dismissal were his failure to remediate preexisting problems.
Having found that the scope of the school board’s inquiry was appropriate, the court then found that the board had just cause for the termination. The court rejected the coach’s argument that the December 2003 incident was insufficient to support the decision, deferring to the board’s findings as to that incident and noting again that the termination was based on the whole history. As for Mr. Cullinan’s attack on the board’s reliance on the complaints in the “Parents v. Cullinan” packet, which he argued concerned playing time, the court agreed with the board’s finding that the December 2003 complaint had nothing to do with playing time and that the packet focused mostly on his behavior toward the players and the damage being done to the basketball program. Finally, the court found that the player’s complaint about the December 2003 incident was unrelated to an incident at a winter formal dance where the player’s date had consumed alcohol.
Board of Dir. of Ames Cmty. Sch. Dist., No. 05-1059 (Iowa Feb. 29, 2008)
[Editor’s Note: Last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (AL, GA, FL) rejected a Title VII suit by a former softball coach, who argued that the school district’s citing of complaints about her abusive behavior was merely a pretext for gender discrimination. That decision is summarized below.]
NSBA School law Hankinson v. Thomas County Sch. System