What Connecticut Boards of Education Need to Know: Binding Hearing Officer Decisions in Tenured Teacher Terminations and New Benefits for Assaulted Staff, by Andrea Strain, Esq., 10-22-2026

* This is the second in a series of articles that will address Connecticut employer’s obligations related to recently enacted laws. 

As boards of education plan for the second half of the school year, two changes made by Public Act 26-12 deserve a place on the agenda. First, effective July 1, 2026, when a tenured teacher facing termination requests a hearing, that hearing must be held before an impartial hearing officer, and the hearing officer’s decision binds both the board and the teacher. Boards no longer have the option of hearing these cases themselves. Second, effective October 1, 2026, board members, teachers and other board employees who are injured in an assault on the job receive workers’ compensation at 100 percent of their average weekly earnings, without the usual cap, and the former statute covering assaulted school personnel has been repealed.

Tenured teacher terminations: what changed

Section 8 of the act amends Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-151. The grounds for terminating a tenured teacher are unchanged: inefficiency, incompetence or ineffectiveness; insubordination against reasonable board rules; moral misconduct; disability shown by competent medical evidence; elimination of position; and other due and sufficient reasons. The process for deciding whether those grounds exist has changed in several respects.

• Hearing officer only. The hearing is still triggered by the teacher. After the superintendent gives written notice that termination is under consideration, the teacher may file a written request for a hearing with the board within ten calendar days. If the teacher makes that request, the hearing must now be held before an impartial hearing officer chosen by the teacher and the superintendent. The board and board subcommittees no longer hear these cases. If the parties cannot agree on a hearing officer within five calendar days, the officer is selected with the assistance of the American Arbitration Association using its expedited process, and the former fallback to a hearing before the board has been removed.
• Binding decision. Within forty-five calendar days after the hearing request, subject to an agreed extension of up to fifteen days, the hearing officer must give the board and the teacher a written disposition that is binding on both. Under prior law, the hearing officer’s findings were a recommendation, and the board made the final decision.
• Standard of review. The standard of review for all grounds is now the same standard applied in other disciplinary actions under the teacher’s collective bargaining agreement.
• Shared costs. The board and the teacher share the hearing officer’s fee and all other costs of the hearing equally. Each party that wants a transcript bears the cost of its own copy.
• Public hearing. The hearing is public if the teacher requests it. The board and the hearing officer no longer have authority to designate the hearing as public.
• Court review. Either the teacher or the board may apply to the Superior Court to confirm, vacate or modify the hearing officer’s award under Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-417 to 52-419, the statutes that govern review of arbitration awards. Previously, only the teacher could appeal, and the appeal was from the board’s decision.

Where termination is based on incompetence or ineffectiveness, the hearing continues to address whether the teacher’s performance evaluation ratings were determined in good faith under the board’s evaluation program and were reasonable in light of the evidence, and it remains limited to twelve total hours of evidence and testimony, six per side, unless the hearing officer extends the time for good cause. The superintendent’s authority to suspend a teacher immediately when serious misconduct is charged is unchanged.

The procedures for teachers who have not attained tenure are largely unchanged. The board continues to make the final decision on a nonrenewal or termination, and it may rescind a nonrenewal decision only if it finds the decision arbitrary and capricious.

Assaulted board members, teachers and staff

Section 1 of the act adds subsection (f) to Conn. Gen. Stat. § 31-307, the workers’ compensation statute. When a compensable injury results in total or partial incapacity because of a physical or negligent assault on a member of a local or regional board of education, the State Board of Education, the Board of Regents for Higher Education or the UConn Board of Trustees, or on a teacher or other employee of those boards, while acting within the scope of their duties, the injured person receives:

• weekly compensation equal to 100 percent of average weekly earnings, rather than the usual 75 percent of after-tax earnings, and without the statutory maximum weekly benefit;
• reasonable expenses for medical or other services needed as a result of the assault; and
• lost wages for absences to appear in court in connection with the assault.

As under prior law, the injured person continues to receive full salary during an absence caused by the assault or a related court appearance, the board may deduct any workers’ compensation award from those payments, and the absence may not be charged to sick leave, vacation or personal days. “Teacher” and “other employee” include student teachers working under a board-employed teacher.

Section 75 of the act repeals Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-236a, which required boards to hold assaulted members, teachers and employees harmless from related financial loss and expense. Those protections now operate through the workers’ compensation system described above. Unlike the open-ended “financial loss and expense” language of the former statute, subsection (f) lists the specific benefits payable, which gives boards a more defined measure of their obligations, although the uncapped 100 percent rate increases the weekly cost of these claims. The act does not define “physical or negligent assault,” and its scope is likely to be clarified over time.

What boards of education should do now

• Review the discipline standard in each teacher collective bargaining agreement, because that standard now governs tenured teacher termination hearings.
• Update board policies and administrative procedures to remove board and subcommittee hearings for tenured teachers and to reflect binding hearing officer decisions.
• Calendar the statutory timelines in every termination matter: ten days for the teacher’s hearing request, five days to agree on a hearing officer, fifteen days to begin the hearing and forty-five days for the written disposition.
• Budget for the board’s share of hearing officer fees and hearing costs.
• Confirm that evaluations supporting any incompetence or ineffectiveness case follow the board’s evaluation program under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-151b.
• Notify your workers’ compensation carrier or third-party administrator of the new benefit level for assault-related claims, and confirm that payroll continues full salary, offset by any award, without a charge to leave.
• Make sure incident reports for assaults on staff capture the facts needed to evaluate a claim.

To read a preview of the laws in a previous roundup, click here.

Author: Andrea Strain, Westchester and Connecticut Of Counsel