California School Employees Association v. Bonita Unified School District
Filed May 29, 2008
Second District, Division One
Cite as 2008 SOS 3149

Arbitration Decision on Summary Termination of Employee Sustained

Donald Roberts worked for the Bonita Unified School District as a maintenance mechanic. The district summarily terminated Roberts in June 2004, citing various misconduct including incompetence, dishonesty, insubordination, immoral conduct, evident unfitness for service, absent without authority, and violation of school laws.

The district accused Roberts of the following actions, among other things:

• That he had created a sexually hostile work environment for two female employees.


• That he had thereby exposed the district to liability under state and federal antidiscrimination laws.

As a result, Roberts through the California School Employees Association filed a grievance with the district, alleging that his summary termination violated the terms of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which agreement required the district to use the following forms of “progressive discipline”:

• verbal counseling and warnings


• written warnings


• letters of reprimand unless an employee’s misconduct was so “serious” as to warrant bypassing that progression

Further, the district agreed to submit to arbitration. The arbitration aims to resolve the question of how serious was Roberts’s misconduct to warrant bypassing progressive discipline.

Consequently, the arbitrator found that it was not and concluded that Roberts was entitled to reinstatement with back pay.

However, the district’s governing board reviewed the evidence presented at the arbitration hearing and disagreed with the arbitrator’s definition of “serious.” The board then issued its own decision “vacating” the arbitration award and upholding Roberts’s termination.

In response, Roberts and the union turned to the trial court for relief, filing a petition to confirm the arbitration award and to obtain a writ of mandate directing the governing board to reverse its decision and comply with the remedial portion of the award. The trial court granted the petition in its entirety.

During review, the Second District court of appeal affirmed, holding that that the board’s decision failed to accord proper deference to the arbitration award.

Further, the court agreed that the board had the authority to review the arbitration award and to vacate that award if it was invalid.

Further, the court found that there were no grounds for finding that the award was invalid. The Arbitration Act sets forth multiple grounds for invalidating an award, including corruption and misconduct by an arbitrator, none of which was shown here.

Still further, the court rejected the board’s contention that the CBA’s arbitration provisions were “wholly or partially invalid”. It cited Education Code section 45113(e), which permits classified employees to submit certain disciplinary disputes to arbitration pursuant to the terms of a collective bargaining agreement.

Further, the court found nothing in section 45113(b), which governs board hearings, that invalidates the CBA’s “final and binding” provision, which applies to arbitration. In addition, as more than one court has held, if an award is not final and binding, it is not an arbitration award. Because the board did not establish a proper basis for vacating the arbitration award, the trial court correctly granted the petition to confirm.

The Second Appellate District therefore affirmed a judgment, which held that the arbitration award entered following a hearing on a grievance filed by a school district employee and his union was final and binding in accordance with the terms of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement. Thus, the arbitration decision could not be vacated by the school district’s governing board unless one or more of the statutorily permitted grounds for vacating the award applied.