Court OKs summer school jobless benefits
Substitute teachers and other school employees may be eligible for unemployment benefits when they’re not called to work in a summer school session, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a case from San Francisco, the court unanimously rejected the city school district’s argument that summer school sessions can never be considered regular “academic terms” that are the basis for unemployment benefits for oncall employees who are not summoned to work.
A summer session is classified as a “regular” term, making outofwork employees eligible for payments, if it resembles the normal falltospring term in “enrollment, staffing, budget, instructional program, or other objective characteristics,” Justice Goodwin Liu said in the 70 ruling.
The court did not decide whether 26 substitute teachers, janitors and other San Francisco school employees were entitled to the benefits they were denied by the state in 2011, and said lower courts should consider them under the new standards.
But a lawyer for the union that sued the district seeking benefits for the workers said the ruling should make sidelined employees eligible for summer jobless benefits in large school districts with established summer programs.
“It means that more of our clients who make themselves available to help the district during the summer will get unemployment benefits if the district doesn’t need them, which means the district will do a better job of planning,’’ said David Rosenfeld, attorney for United Educators of San Francisco.
A lawyer for the school district, however, predicted the state would still deny benefits under the court’s standard.
For districts like San Francisco “that maintain a traditional academic calendar consisting of a fall and spring term, and an optional summer session, the general rule (in state law) — that school employees are not eligible for unemployment benefits in the period between academic years or terms — would still apply,” said attorney John Yeh.
He noted that the Legislature passed a state law last year providing some financial help to school employees who are out of work in the summer.
Unemployment benefits are generally available to those who are temporarily jobless, through no fault of their own, and are seeking work they are able to perform. The standards have been less clear, however, for schools, where most fulltime employees work about nine months per year.
California law, similar to federal law, makes public school employees ineligible for benefits during the period between one “academic term” and another if they worked during the first term and had a reasonable assurance of work during the next term.
In the San Francisco case, a Superior Court judge and a state appeals court ruled that the substitutes and other employees who were “on call” for work during the 2011 summer session were not eligible for jobless benefits, because the session was not an “academic term,” and they had been reasonably assured of jobs in the fall.
But the state’s high court said it’s not that simple.
A district that offered a few weeks of summer classes, with limited offerings and enrollment, or provided remedial parttime courses to a particular group of students, would not be holding a regular academic term and would not make oncall staff eligible for benefits, Liu said. It would be different, he said, if the summer program offered the same types of classes as the regular school year and had comparable staffing, budgets and enrollment
“In such circumstances, school employees are expected to work over the summer, and they expect the income from that work to provide for their needs,” Liu said.
He cited the court’s ruling in a 1984 case that said California’s unemployment insurance law must be interpreted liberally “to further the legislative objective of reducing the hardship of unemployment.”
The case is United Educators of San Francisco vs. California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, S235903.