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As Alabama schools continue to adjust instruction and respond to the pandemic, four Tuscaloosa County teachers say their district left them overworked and underpaid last year.
Michelle Beasley, who teaches math at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa County, filed a complaint against the system in June, claiming that the district had violated Alabama law by requiring her and other teachers to “perform significantly more teaching duties than for which they were hired and are compensated” when the system shifted to hybrid learning last year.
The lawsuit comes as districts across the state are scrambling to retain teachers after seeing a record number of retirements last year. Experts say instructional changes and increased workloads have contributed to greater levels of burnout among teachers nationwide.
Some districts managed workloads by cutting down teaching time to focus on other tasks, like adapting coursework or responding to more online questions. Some even gave teachers the option to teach hybrid or remote classes.
Read more Ed Lab: Alabama isn’t tracking effort to diversify teacher pipeline.
But Beasley claimed that “unlike the vast majority of other school systems in Alabama,” Tuscaloosa County did not reduce the number of instructional days or divide in-person and virtual teaching duties.
She claimed that by not providing additional compensation for more hours worked, defendants had effected a “partial termination” without due process, in a violation of Alabama’s Student First Act.
Beasley also claimed that the district’s efforts to reduce workloads -- such as purchasing a different computer system with Cares Act funding -- failed to provide direct support to teachers.
Edgenuity, the new system that has since been scrutinized for a lack of instructional supports, did not cover all classes and wasn’t being used by several students, she claimed.
The district gave stipends for librarians and other school personnel who assisted students with the software, but she said officials did not provide teachers with extra compensation for sometimes putting in an additional “full day of work” each week to address students’ virtual needs.
Court documents include discrimination charges Tuscaloosa County Schools teachers filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission beginning in December 2020.
Beasley, who has taught in the system for 32 years, claimed age and sex discrimination, stating that the policy negatively affected teachers, who in her district are disproportionately women. She also said that when she took her complaints to the mostly male school board, the teachers were written off as “whiny females.”
“Stated otherwise, they dismissed our claims and told us to cut out the female hysteria and shut up,” she wrote.
Rebecca Kennedy, who teaches fourth grade at Holt Elementary School, said she was inundated with calls and emails from virtual students that kept her up late at night.
“I am an educated, trained and experienced teacher, not a computer scientist or web designer,” Kennedy wrote. “...While everyone, including teachers, must do their best during this pandemic, the burden of the pandemic should not and cannot be solely carried on the backs of already overworked and underpaid educators,especially when most of them are women, and most of them also have to be the primary caregivers of their children and other relatives.”
In March, the EEOC granted Kennedy and Beasley their right to sue in federal court, and in mid-September, Beasley and three others filed an amended complaint with two additional discrimination charges, including one from a teacher who said she was so overwhelmed that she had to get a prescription for “mental health issues.”
Two weeks later, Tuscaloosa County Schools Superintendent Keri Johnson and board members filed motions to dismiss all claims on the grounds of qualified immunity -- a typically successful defense among school administrators who argue they were acting within state-sanctioned authority at work.
“No credible argument can be made that assigning teachers’ duties for instructing students, providing teaching resources, requiring use of specific teaching methods, or determining appropriate compensation – which are the fundamental bases of the plaintiffs’ claims – are somehow outside a school superintendent’s official duties,” the school district’s attorneys wrote.
School officials also argued that teachers should sue over job duties in state, not federal, court.
The teachers have asked the court to consider their case as a class-action lawsuit. The district has not yet filed its answer.
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