## Facts

- Ronald McKinley was a tenured radiology instructor employed by Community College District 508, governed by the Board of Trustees (the Board).
- McKinley’s individual contract barred him from accepting concurrent “full-time employment” while teaching for the District.
- The collective-bargaining agreement between the Board and the faculty union contained a similar restriction, but neither the contract nor the agreement defined “full-time employment.”
- While employed as an instructor, McKinley began working in a hospital radiology department.
- McKinley’s hospital application stated he was to work 72 hours per two-week period, but his actual schedule initially averaged about 37.13 hours per week.
- Under the hospital’s policies, “full-time” employment was defined as working 75 or more hours per two-week period.
- The head of the hospital radiology department stated McKinley was hired as a part-time employee because of his teaching duties, though McKinley received full-time benefits from the hospital.
- The District required faculty to complete annual outside-employment disclosure forms; for three years, McKinley omitted his hospital employment from those forms.
- By the time McKinley disclosed the hospital job, he had voluntarily reduced his hospital work to about 20 hours per week.
- After the Board learned of the hospital employment, the District’s director of labor relations recommended termination, and the Board issued notice that McKinley was being terminated for violating the contractual ban on outside full-time employment.
- McKinley sought administrative review before an independent hearing officer, Robert E. Dunham.
- The hearing officer found that McKinley had falsified the disclosure statements by omitting the hospital job, but concluded that termination was too harsh and ordered McKinley reinstated, relying in part on the ambiguity of “full-time employment.”
- The circuit court affirmed the hearing officer’s decision, and the Board appealed to the Appellate Court of Illinois, First District.

## Issues

1. Whether the hearing officer could reasonably conclude that McKinley’s hospital job was not clearly prohibited “full-time employment” when the governing documents used the term “full-time” but did not define it and the evidence about McKinley’s status was mixed.
2. Whether the hearing officer had authority to order reinstatement and reduce the Board’s chosen sanction after finding that McKinley falsified outside-employment disclosure forms.
3. Whether the circuit court and appellate court were required to defer to the hearing officer’s factual findings and sanction decision on administrative review.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the circuit court’s judgment upholding the hearing officer’s order reinstating McKinley.
- The court accepted the hearing officer’s view that “full-time employment,” as used in the contract and bargaining agreement, was ambiguous and could be evaluated using record evidence such as hours worked and the hospital’s classification rules.
- The court held the hearing officer could consider the hospital’s definition of full-time (75 hours per two-week period), McKinley’s initial schedule averaging less than that threshold, and testimony that he was treated as part-time due to teaching duties, even though he received full-time benefits.
- The court upheld the hearing officer’s determination that discharge was an excessive penalty in light of the ambiguous contract term and the surrounding circumstances, despite the finding that McKinley falsified disclosure forms.
- The court declined to reweigh the evidence or replace the hearing officer’s judgment where the hearing officer’s findings and remedy were supported by the record and within the officer’s assigned role.

## Legal Principles

- When a contract or bargaining provision restricts outside employment using an undefined term (such as “full-time employment”), the decision-maker may treat the term as ambiguous and evaluate its meaning using record evidence, including hours actually worked and the outside employer’s classifications.
- On administrative review, courts generally uphold an administrative factfinder’s determinations unless they are against the manifest weight of the evidence.
- In teacher-dismissal proceedings conducted by an independent hearing officer, the officer may assess whether the charged conduct warrants termination and may order reinstatement when discharge is not justified on the record.
- Even where misconduct is found (such as falsifying disclosure forms), the reviewing body may consider proportionality of discipline and whether termination bears a rational relationship to legitimate service needs, rather than treating discharge as automatic.

## Conclusion

The Illinois appellate court affirmed reinstatement of a tenured community college instructor after an independent hearing officer found that the instructor had falsified outside-employment disclosures but determined that discharge was too severe, particularly because the contractual ban on “full-time” outside employment was undefined and the evidence permitted a finding that the hospital job was not clearly “full-time” under the governing documents.


Community College Dist. 508 v. McKinley, 513 N.E.2d 951 (1987)