Background
Louis Colasanti worked as an adjunct professor at the Community College of Vermont, which divides its academic year into spring, summer, and fall trimesters. He taught in spring 2024 and had a contract to teach again in fall 2024, but received no summer assignment. He knew before the spring term that he had not been offered summer courses. His history at the college included several years in which he taught during spring and fall but not summer.
After the spring term, Colasanti sought unemployment benefits for weeks spanning May through September 2024. A claims adjudicator denied benefits, and an administrative law judge affirmed. The Employment Security Board reversed, reasoning that summer was the successive term after spring and that Colasanti lacked reasonable assurance of summer employment. Vermont State Colleges appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Vermont Supreme Court reversed. It held that 21 V.S.A. § 1343(c)(1) barred benefits during the period between two regular but nonsuccessive academic terms when the parties agreed that the employee would work in those terms and the employee had a contract or reasonable assurance of work in the second term. Colasanti’s spring and fall teaching contracts, lack of a summer assignment, advance knowledge of that schedule, and prior similar arrangements established the required agreement.
The Court concluded that the Board had focused on the statute’s exclusion for periods between successive terms while overlooking the separate exclusion for periods between regular but nonsuccessive terms. It also rejected the Department’s argument that an “explicit agreement” was required because the statute requires only an “agreement.” The federal guidance cited by the Board did not change the result because its hypothetical involved an instructor with a materially different history of continuous year-round teaching and no specific nonsuccessive-term arrangement.
Key Takeaways
- An educator may be ineligible for unemployment benefits during an intervening academic term when the educator agreed to work in the regular terms immediately before and after it.
- Section 1343(c)(1) does not require an “explicit” or separately written agreement for a regular, nonsuccessive-term schedule.
- Because the appeal presented statutory construction rather than a matter within the Board’s factual or employment-specific expertise, the Court reviewed the issue de novo.
Why It Matters
The decision clarifies that Vermont’s educational-employee exclusion is not limited to breaks between consecutive academic terms. It also reaches an intervening term—such as summer—when the educator and institution have agreed to employment in regular but nonsuccessive terms and the educator has a contract or reasonable assurance of returning for the later term.