VIERA, Fla. A circuit judge is scheduled to hear arguments this month over whether Brevard Public Schools can strip out the one part of an arbitration ruling that went against it in the Melissa Calhoun case, a holding that determines whether any teacher in the district can challenge a formal letter of reprimand.
The School Board of Brevard County filed a lawsuit to partially vacate the award against the Brevard Federation of Teachers on May 20, 2026. The union answered on June 17 with an opposition and a motion asking the court to confirm the award instead. Judge Curt Jacobus has set a 45-minute non-evidentiary hearing for September 15 at 10:30 a.m. where he is expected to take up both requests together.
The board is not contesting Calhoun’s non-renewal. Arbitrator Mark I. Lurie upheld that. What the board wants struck from his February 19, 2026 award is his separate conclusion that a letter of reprimand is “discipline” under the teachers’ contract, which makes it subject to a just cause standard and challengeable through the grievance and arbitration process.
The district’s position
Brevard Public Schools said the petition has nothing to do with Calhoun’s employment.
“The School Board is satisfied with the arbitration outcome in the Calhoun case,” said Janet Murnaghan, the district’s Chief Strategic Communications Officer, in a written response to The Space Coast Rocket. “The Superintendent’s decision not to recommend Melissa Calhoun for reappointment was upheld, and this petition will not affect that result in any way.”
Murnaghan said the challenge “focuses solely on one legal conclusion in the award” and called it “a contract interpretation issue, not a challenge to the outcome.”
“The collective bargaining agreement explicitly defines discipline as four specific actions: demotion, suspension, termination, and loss of pay,” she said. “By classifying a Letter of Reprimand as discipline, the arbitrator added a fifth category the parties never agreed to.”
She said the district’s concern is precedent. “If this interpretation stands unchallenged, it creates precedent that might potentially allow unions to grieve every Letter of Reprimand issued in this district. Neither party agreed to this in contract. This petition is about protecting the integrity of the contract both parties negotiated moving forward, not about Melissa Calhoun.”
Calhoun: “It should concern every BPS teacher”
Calhoun, who is not a party to the lawsuit, was shown the district’s statement and responded in full:
“It’s disheartening to see the district continue to drag this process out, but I agree with one thing in their statement: this should not be about Melissa Calhoun. It should concern every BPS teacher when the district is willing to spend taxpayer money challenging an arbitrator’s interpretation of the contractual protections teachers rely on, particularly while questions remain about whether the district followed its own investigative procedures. If those protections can be challenged when they become inconvenient, teachers should be asking themselves what the real motive behind this challenge is then. I think, at the very least, it should erode the trust every teacher, parent, and student has with current BPS leadership.”
The board’s petition, filed by attorneys Jeffrey E. Mandel and Molly K. Mullen of Fisher & Phillips in Orlando, rests on the wording of Article VI, Section A.4 of the agreement that took effect August 27, 2024: “If any teacher shall be disciplined, i.e., demoted, suspended, terminated, or suffer loss of pay, such discipline shall be for just cause and may be challenged pursuant to the provisions of Article IV of this Agreement.”
The petition argues the Latin abbreviation is decisive. “The parties’ choice of the Latin abbreviation ‘i.e.’ is dispositive,” it states, because “i.e.” means “that is,” a term of definition, while “e.g.” means “for example,” a term of illustration. Read that way, discipline is capped at four actions and a reprimand is not one of them. The board also notes that two nearby sections use the phrase “reprimand or discipline,” which it says would be redundant if a reprimand were already a form of discipline.
The union’s response
Union President Anthony S. Colucci declined to answer questions directly, telling The Space Coast Rocket that after speaking with the union’s attorney, “we decided that we would pass our legal response on to you as it answers most of your questions.”
That filing, by attorney Mark Wilensky of Dubiner & Wilensky in Wellington, argues the court has almost no room to grant what the board wants. Its central authority is the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Schnurmacher Holding, Inc. v. Noriega, which holds that an arbitration award “cannot be set aside for mere errors of judgment either as to the law or as to the facts.” Under that case, an arbitrator exceeds his powers only when he “goes beyond the authority granted by the parties” and “decides an issue not pertinent to the resolution of the issue submitted to arbitration.”
The question submitted to Lurie was whether issuing the reprimand violated the contract, the union writes, and that is the question he answered.
“This is not a case where the Arbitrator decided an issue not pertinent to resolving the issues submitted to arbitration,” Wilensky wrote. “It is instead a case where the School Board does not like the result it achieved, and seeks a second bite at the apple with this court.”
The filing closes by quoting the Third District Court of Appeal’s 2022 decision in Metalonis v. Boies Schiller Flexner, LLP: “Everyone supposedly loves arbitration. At least until arbitration goes badly.” That court described the appeal before it as “yet another instance of a dissatisfied party attempting to convert arbitration losses into court victories.” The union writes that the passage “might well have been written for this matter.”
What the district did not argue, and when
The union’s filing makes a second claim about the district’s conduct before the case reached an arbitrator.
The grievance was filed on Calhoun’s behalf on April 17, 2025. Under the contract, grievances move through informal and formal steps before either side can demand arbitration at Step IV. The union says the district “fully participated in the grievance process” and “did not suggest or in any way posture in its decision at Step III that the Letter of Reprimand issued to Ms. Calhoun was not subject to the just cause standard for discipline.”
“Denial of the grievance because the Letter of Reprimand was not discipline subject to the just cause standard pursuant to the terms of the CBA was a position available to the School Board long before the matter proceeded to arbitration,” the response states. “However, the School Board failed to make that claim.”
By processing the grievance on its merits, the union argues, the district “acknowledged that the Letter of Reprimand was subject to the just cause standard for discipline.” The district did raise the argument at the December 19, 2025 arbitration hearing, where Lurie rejected it.
On the contract language itself, the union notes that neither “reprimand” nor “Letter of Reprimand” is defined anywhere in the agreement, and argues the board’s reading breaks other provisions. It points to Article VI, Section A.6, which limits “any disciplinary action” arising from a parent or student complaint to “informal action” unless the matter was first reported to the teacher in writing. “Were disciplinary action limited to demotion, suspension or suffering loss of pay, there could be no informal disciplinary action,” the filing states.
Its fallback is that none of that decides the case. Quoting the Eleventh Circuit, the union argues “the sole question for us is whether the arbitrator (even arguably) interpreted the parties’ contract, not whether he got its meaning right or wrong.”
A split ruling
Lurie’s February award was not a clean win for either side.
Calhoun taught in Brevard County for 12 years, most recently Advanced Placement English at Satellite High School, with what the award describes as a clean disciplinary record. During the 2024-2025 school year she addressed a female student by a male name the student preferred, without parental consent recorded in the district’s FOCUS database, contrary to Section 1000.071, Florida Statutes, which took effect July 1, 2023. The award uses the fictitious names “Brittany” and “Bradley” to protect the student’s identity. Calhoun testified she had known the student by that name for years and called her failure to check FOCUS a “complete oversite.”
On March 6, 2025, Principal Courtney Lundy emailed Calhoun to schedule a meeting about “your reappointment for the upcoming school year.” That same day, School Board Vice Chair Matt Susin took a call from the student’s mother reporting that teachers had been using the male name. On March 14, Lundy wrote that Calhoun would be recommended for reappointment at the May 6 board meeting. On April 3, in a single meeting, Human Resources Director Ryan Dufrain handed Calhoun both Superintendent Mark Rendell’s letter of reprimand and a letter stating she would not be recommended for 2025-2026. Both were dated April 1, and neither referenced the other.
Lurie denied the grievance on nearly every count. He rejected the union’s arguments alleging double discipline, disparate treatment, an inadequate investigation and a departure from past practice, and he held that the superintendent retained unrestricted authority not to recommend an annual contract teacher for reappointment. “An annual contract teacher has no property right to renewal, even if recommended by a school Principal,” he wrote.
He ruled for the union on one point. Under Article VI, Section A.6, formal discipline arising from a parent complaint is limited to matters first reported to the teacher in writing. The only writing Calhoun received beforehand was a March 10 email from Lundy referring to “a parent concern.” Lurie found that email did not report the facts of the complaint, that the reprimand therefore should have been an informal action, and that it “was not issued for just cause.” He directed Lundy to recommend Calhoun for reappointment and directed Rendell to decide de novo whether to carry that recommendation to the board.
The district rescinded the reprimand in late February, which Calhoun called “a win for accountability.” The district described the same award as a win of its own.
In July 2025, the state Education Practices Commission unanimously approved a settlement allowing Calhoun to keep her teaching certificate with a $750 fine, a written reprimand from the Florida Department of Education, one year of probation and an ethics course. She applied to return to the district, and Brevard Public Schools declined to rehire her days before the 2025-2026 school year began.
What is at stake
Under Section 682.13(4), Florida Statutes, if a motion to vacate is denied and no motion to modify or correct is pending, the court “shall confirm the award.” That is why the union paired its opposition with a motion to confirm, and why Jacobus is expected to consider both at the same hearing.
A ruling for the board would mean a written reprimand could not be tested for just cause or carried to arbitration. It would also mean a reprimand is not an “action that rose to the level of discipline” under the contract provision governing when a principal must recommend a teacher for reappointment, the same tension Lurie flagged when he wrote that the claim Calhoun’s reprimand was not discipline “collided with the Article VI, Section F mandate.”
Documents: Petition to Partially Vacate Arbitration Award and Incorporated Memorandum of Law, filing no. 248664120; Response in Opposition to Petition to Partially Vacate Arbitration Award and Motion to Confirm Arbitration Award, served June 17, 2026; Arbitration Award of Mark I. Lurie, American Arbitration Association case no. 01-25-0002-4853, February 19, 2026. All in School Board of Brevard County v. Brevard Federation of Teachers, Local 2098, case no. 05-2026-CA-031661-XXCA-BC, Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, Brevard County.
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