Opinion
No. 29532.
November 23, 1931.
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS. Rights of school teacher under contract to teach designated school held lost, where district, including school building, was annexed to municipal district.
Where a teacher is selected to teach a named school, and contract given therefor, and, after such selection and contract, the school, by action of the county school board, is annexed to a municipal school district, the teacher's right to teach the school is lost, as the school board has authority to consolidate public schools, and teachers' rights are subordinate thereto.
APPEAL from circuit court of Jackson county; HON.W.A. WHITE, Judge.
Frank S. McInnis, of Moss Point, for appellant.
The Baria case, 130 So. 754-56, does not control here for the reason, that in that case there was a re-assignment of a teacher without her consent, in the instant case we have the re-assignment of a teacher with her consent, the consent in writing of two of the three trustees, a contract with the teacher by the county superintendent, issuance of pay certificates by him to her for two months, and her acting under the contract and performing the services contracted for in a manner that was satisfactory to himself, the trustee and the patrons.
The ratification must be made by the proper authorities in the same capacity in which they were required to act in making the contract in the first instance, and with full knowledge of the existence and nature of the contract in question.
15 C.J., p. 554, par. 2.
H.P. Heidelberg, of Pascagoula, for appellee.
When the school to which appellant had been elected and the territory it served had been, by operation of law, removed and taken from the Orange Lake Consolidated District and transferred to the Moss Point Municipal Separate School District, the appellant was without any valid contract to teach anywhere for the session of 1930-1931.
It is well settled that contracts made by the officers of a municipal and quasi-municipal corporations in violation of law impose no liability upon the body politic, and that no subsequent ratification by such officers of a void contract can impart to it validity. Having originally no authority to enter into a contract in the mode adopted, they can have no power to validate it by subsequent ratification.
Board of Supervisors v. Arright, 54 Miss. 668; Paxton v. Baum, 59 Miss. 539; Honea v. Board, 63 Miss. 178.
The attempted transfer of appellant was void.
State ex rel. v. Baria, 130 So. 754.
The relator, Miss Bama Phillips, was a licensed, first grade teacher in Jackson county, Miss., and was, on June 12, 1930, elected as a teacher in the Kreole school of the Orange Lake consolidated school district for the session of 1930-1931. On June 27, 1930, two of the three trustees of the consolidated school district notified the superintendent of education that they desired to transfer Miss Phillips from the Kreole school to the Pecan school in said Orange Lake consolidated school district, and the superintendent ordered her transferred from the Kreole to the Pecan school, and made a contract with her to teach the school.
At that time, there was no central school located in the Orange Lake consolidated school district, and the schools were being taught at the former school sites, which were now to go into the consolidated school district. On July 14, 1930, the Jackson county school board detached the major portion of the territory constituting the Kreole school district as it formerly existed, including the school building, and annexed said territory to the Moss Point separate school district.
The trustees of the Orange Lake consolidated school district elected Mrs. J.R. Baria as a teacher in the Pecan school district, and a contract was made with her to teach therein; but, thereafter, the superintendent of education, at the request of two of the trustees, undertook to transfer Mrs. Baria to the Kreole school district, but she insisted upon her contract rights and brought suit to enforce same, in which suit she prevailed, as will appear from the case of State ex rel. v. Alexander, 158 Miss. 557, 130 So. 754.
Miss Bama Phillips, the relator in the present suit, taught two months and three weeks at the Pecan school, and was paid for the two months of time by the county superintendent of education. She brought the present suit to compel the carrying out of her contract for the full term, and to compel the superintendent to issue warrants for services to be rendered during the term.
In the court below, she was allowed payment for the three weeks actually taught, she having been paid for the two months already; but was denied relief as to the balance of the term.
We think the circuit court was correct. When the school board took from the Orange Lake consolidated school district the Kreole school district, including the building, and annexed it to the Moss Point consolidated school district, the appellant, Miss Bama Phillips, had no school to teach under her contract. The county school board had authority in the premises, and the rights of the relator were subject to the lawful power of the school board. The finding of the circuit court was as favorable to her as the law authorizes. The judgment of the circuit court is accordingly affirmed.
Affirmed.