The California Education Code says that school districts have to treat teachers uniformly in terms of salary and experience. No favoring one teacher over another. Fair enough.
The teacher's union enters into a collective bargaining agreement with a school district that sets teacher salaries based on years of experience and training level. It's a grid; so many years of experience plus a master's degree, for example, means you're paid $X.
Susan George worked first as a teacher for five years, and then worked as a teacher for the Susanville Elementary School District for seven years, so those years (5 + 7) put her on "Step 12" of the relevant salary schedule. She then leaves the district and teaches elsewhere for two years, then comes back. The collective bargaining agreement says that once rehired like that, she comes back starting at Step 13 (since her last salary at the district was at Step 12).
But Ms. George says she should be at Step 15 because she's got to get credit for the two (latest) years she taught outside the district.
To be clear: That's not what the collective bargaining agreement says. It says she's at Step 13. No credit for interim teaching if you leave the district and come back. But Ms. George says that violates the "uniformity" clause of the Education Code, which (if applicable) trumps the CBA. To which the school district responds: "Well, maybe, but there's no conflict; we're treating Ms. George the same way we treat everyone who gets rehired. No out-of-district credit."
To me, that's a pretty good response. I presume that school districts aren't required to give out-of-district credit if they don't want to. Maybe that out-of-school district stinks. Maybe districts don't want to have to judge whether a different district is "good enough" to give someone experience. Seems rational to me, and if the union and district agree on that -- as they did here -- that seems fine.
Which is what the trial court held. But the Court of Appeal says at the very outset of the opinion it's reversing, yet for 95% of the opinion, I'm sitting here thinking to myself: "Why? None of the opinion's arguments are persuasive to me yet."
But then I get to the very end of the opinion, which adds one fairly important fact -- one that I wish I knew about earlier. (One that, in retrospect, Justice Robie mentioned early on, in sentence about new district teachers potentially being at Step 13, but which I didn't realize the significance of until the end of the opinion.)
The Susanville Elementary School District does give credit for out-of-district experience. But only for new teachers (who haven't taught in the district before), and only for up to 12 years. Which means Ms. George is out of luck, since she's not a new teacher, but the Court of Appeal says that violates the uniformity clause. If you're willing to give (some) teachers out-of-district experience, you've got to do the same for Ms. George.
Okay. That argument makes some sense to me.
I'm still not 100% it's dispositive, but I could at least see the argument.
It nonetheless still bothers me somewhat to say that Ms. George isn't being treated like other teachers. True, some teachers get up to 12 years out-of-district credit, even though Ms. George only got 5 (the ones she received before coming to the district). But isn't it potentially rational for the district to make a distinction between old and new teachers in whether they receive credit? A district might well want to say "Hey, if you've got experience teaching at ANY level, you're better off than a brand new teacher who's never taught in the classroom before, so regardless of where you taught, we'll bump up your pay for the first 12 years of teaching, wherever it was. But after 12 years, at that point, you know your way around the classroom already, so after those first 12 years, we're not going to give you credit for school districts that might (or might not) just be totally easy and not teach you anything, because it's too tough for us to tell. We'll still give you credit for years in OUR schools, because we KNOW those give you a ton of experience, but otherwise, nope, you only get out-of-district credit for the first 12 years."
That would seem to me to make potential sense. Or at least enough sense for the teachers (through their union) and the school district to agree to such a deal. As, indeed, they unambiguously did here, in their collective bargaining agreement.
The Court of Appeal says that Ms. George is being treated differently because some teachers get 12 years of out-of-district experience but she's wrongly limited to 5. I agree that'd be the case if, say, she taught 5 years outside Susanville, then 2 in Susanville, then another 3 outside. Yeah, at that point, the uniformity clause might compel her (despite the CBA) to be at Step 11 (5 + 2 +3 plus the new school year) once she's rehired, because it's crazy to treat her differently than a new hire with all 11 prior years of experience outside of Susanville.
But Ms. George has already received her full 12 years of credit. Some from Susanville, some from other districts. She's not new any longer. As long as you treat "old" teachers like her the same, which the CBA does (unless some special provision of the Education Code requires otherwise, which it doesn't in this particular case), it still seems plausible to me that the uniformity requirement is satisfied. Ms. George is being treated the same way as all other teachers similarly situated to her.
So I think the Court of Appeal has a good argument in the end. I'd just (1) have liked it to have been clearer (at least to folks like me) earlier in the opinion, and (2) have liked to see the Court of Appeal respond to the above argument about the distinction between what I call "old" versus "new" teachers.
That said, I definitely see both sides, and don't think it's an easy case. I'm not even 100% sure where I stand myself. (I'd want to see how Justice Robie responded to my thoughts; it's eminently possible that he's persuade me in the end.)