An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 4 - Employment Contracts And Separation Of Employees

One incident of misconduct may be egregious enough to justify termination of employment, but the school should ensure that, for performance or behavior issues that can be corrected, it gave the employee notice and an opportunity to cure the problems. 417 Other examples of good cause for termination include:

 Layoffs for economic reasons (while several cases have found that layoffs effectuated for economic reasons constitute good cause for termination, 418 economic reasons do not shield the employer from liability when the discharge was in violation of public policy); 419  Sale or divestiture of a portion of the employer’s business; 420 and  When an employee is planning to compete with his/her employer. 421

O THER K EY C ONTRACT P ROVISIONS

Section 5

A. P LACE O F E MPLOYMENT Another provision a school should consider including is a precise description of the place of employment required by the position at issue. This is especially important for schools that have multiple campuses. This provision is also important for positions that require the employee to perform some job duties off campus, such as an art teacher who has to travel to an art store to buy supplies or a coach who coaches at away games and tournaments. B. H OURS OF W ORK In this provision, the employment agreement should specify whether the employee’s position is exempt or non-exempt and the employee’s scheduled hours of work. For non-exempt employees, this provision should specify both the beginning and end of the work day and the beginning and end of the 7-day Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) work week. An employee’s work schedule and their FLSA work week are two distinct things and each should be stated in the employment agreement. Since non-exempt employees are entitled to overtime pay for any time worked over 8 hours in one day under California law and over 40 hours in one work week under both California law and the FLSA, it is important to define how the work day and work week are measured. An example of a 7-day FLSA work week is a consecutive 7-day period (168 hours) that begins on Monday at 12:01 a.m. and ends the following Sunday at midnight. This provision should also state that the non-exempt employee must receive prior authorization from a supervisor to work any and all overtime hours if that is a school policy. For more information on wage and hour issues, please refer to the “Wage and Hour Laws” chapter of this Administrator’s Guide.

An Administrator’s Guide to California Private School Law ©2019 Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 113