Key Points

  • Education Code section 45028 required the Trona Joint Unified School District to pay six former teachers the 2022-2023 retroactive salary increases and master's stipends in its 2022-2024 collective bargaining agreement.
  • The agreement contained no language conditioning retroactive pay on continued employment when the district approved it in August 2023, and the record showed no negotiation of such a condition.
  • The statute's uniformity mandate applies to every employee governed by a salary schedule during the period the schedule covers, not only to those employed when the contract becomes operative.
  • The court distinguished Hilmar, where the contract itself limited the payment to current unit members, rejected the district's Unit Member and gift-of-public-funds arguments, and held the arbitration argument forfeited.
  • The judgment was reversed with directions to issue a writ of mandate requiring the payments plus associated employer contributions, with the trial court to determine the exact amounts.

A California appeals court held Monday that the Trona Joint Unified School District must pay retroactive raises and master's-degree stipends to six teachers who worked the full 2022-2023 school year but resigned before the district approved the union contract that granted the increases.

The Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division One, reversed a San Bernardino County Superior Court ruling that had denied the teachers' petition. Justice Buchanan wrote the opinion for a unanimous panel that included Acting Presiding Justice Do and Justice Castillo. The appeals court directed the trial court to issue a writ of mandate requiring the district to pay the teachers along with the associated employer contributions. According to the opinion, the contract's retroactive terms would have meant about $5,000 to $9,000 in additional pay for each teacher.

The decision turns on Education Code section 45028, which requires a district to place its teachers on a salary schedule using a uniform allowance for years of training and years of experience. The statute permits other pay criteria only when the district and the teachers' union "negotiate and mutually agree" to them. The panel held that when a contract's salary schedule reaches back in time, the uniformity rule covers every teacher who worked during the covered period, including teachers who left before the contract was approved.

The Trona Teachers Association, which the opinion calls the TTA, and the district entered into a 2022-2024 collective bargaining agreement, the contract setting pay for the district's teachers and referred to in the opinion as the CBA. The district approved it in August 2023, but the agreement states that it is "to run retroactive from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2024." The contract provided a 5% increase to the salary schedule effective July 1, 2022, and another 5% effective Jan. 1, 2023. Both salary schedules in its appendix state, "Earned Masters: $2,000 stipend."

The six teachers, Michael Lane, Valerie Gennrich, Yesenia Goins, Tyson LoPresti, Cindy Winks and Joseph Wolfe, worked for the district from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023. Each resigned before the August 2023 approval. The district then refused to make the contract's retroactive payments to them, and the union and the six teachers filed their petition in March 2024.

The district argued in the trial court that the contract covered current employees and former employees who were laid off or retired, "but not former employees who resign from their employment." Judge Joseph T. Ortiz denied the petition. Ortiz concluded that the contract "expressly includes 'certificated employees' but does not expressly include former employees in its general coverage."

The appeals court read the contract differently. "There is no language in the CBA conditioning the applicability of the retroactive payments provided for in the CBA on a teacher's continued employment with the District as of the time of the CBA's approval," Buchanan wrote. The panel also found the record devoid of evidence that the union and the district had ever negotiated over a provision tying retroactive pay to continued employment.

The district also argued that section 45028 requires uniform pay only among teachers employed when the contract became operative. The panel rejected that reading of the statute's reference to "[e]ach person employed by a school district." Buchanan wrote that the phrase "is reflective of an intent for the uniformity mandate of section 45028 to apply to whatever employees are governed by the salary schedule at issue during the time period it covers." The panel cited for comparison Palos Verdes Faculty Ass'n v. Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, a 1978 decision that rejected a narrow reading of similar statutory language.

The district's principal precedent was California Teachers Assn. v. Governing Bd. of Hilmar Unified School Dist., a 2002 appellate decision. The Hilmar contract stated that the payment at issue "shall be paid only to all current unit members who served in paid status during the 1997-1998 school year," along with teachers who retired at the end of that year. The Hilmar court held that this limit satisfied the statutory exception for agreed criteria other than training and experience, so the payment did not violate section 45028.

The Trona panel held that the Hilmar decision did not control, because the Trona contract contains a limit of that kind nowhere in its text. The district had argued that the agreement produced "a disparity in pay between current and former teachers who rendered services during the same period of time." Buchanan responded that "it is only the District's misapplication of the CBA that has resulted in this disparity, and not any provision in the CBA itself."

The court rejected the district's remaining arguments. The district contended that the former teachers were not "Unit Members" under the contract because the union no longer represented them. Buchanan wrote that the argument "merely proves the uncontested point that the Former Teachers were not represented by the TTA after their employment ended with the District." The district also argued that paying the teachers would be an unlawful gift of public funds, citing a 1984 decision, Atchley v. City of Fresno. The panel held that the teachers are statutorily entitled to the payments, which defeated the gift argument.

The panel held that the district forfeited its contention that the dispute belonged in arbitration, because the district had raised it only in a cursory footnote. The court also said the district's footnoted challenge to the union's standing "does not support affirmance," noting that the six teachers are individual plaintiffs in their own right.

Lawyers for the union and the teachers included Richa Amar of the California Teachers Association. The district was represented by Steven E. Boehmer of McDougal, Boehmer, Foley, Lyon, Mitchell & Erickson.

The case returns to the San Bernardino County Superior Court, which must issue the writ ordering the district to pay the 2022-2023 retroactive salary adjustments and master's degree stipends. The appeals court authorized the trial court to hold further proceedings to fix the precise amounts owed, and it awarded the plaintiffs their costs on appeal. The court certified the opinion for publication.