Gateway Community Charters - Employment Policies

Employment Policies

In keeping with our commitment to the communities that GCC serve, GCC is an equal employment opportunity employer. It is the policy of the GCC to afford equal employment and advancement opportunity to all qualified individuals without regard to:

- Race (which includes historically associated traits, such as hair styles and protective hair styles, e.g., braids, locks, and twists
- Color;
- Gender (including gender identity and gender expression);
- Sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and medical conditions related to such);
- Religious creed (which includes, without limitation to religious dress and grooming practices);
- Marital status;
- Age;
- National origin (which includes, but is not limited to, national origin groups and aspects of national origin, such as height, weight, accent, or language proficiency);
- Ancestry;
- Physical or mental disability;
- Medical condition;
- Protected medical leaves: Genetic information;
- Sexual orientation;
- Military or veteran status (including state and federal active and reserve members as well as those ordered to duty or training):
- Immigration/citizenship status or related protected activities (which includes undocumented individuals and human trafficking
- Domestic violence victim status:
- Political affiliation; or
- Any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws.

To comply with applicable laws ensuring equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals with a disability, the GCC will make reasonable accommodations for the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or an employee unless undue hardship would result. For questions, concerns or complains, please contact Jason Sample, GCC Title IX Coordinator, Education Equity Compliance at 5112 Arnold Ave, Suite A McClellan, CA 95652. Telephone: 916-286-5129, Fax: 916-993-4167, email: Jason.Sample@GCCCharters.org.

Any applicant or employee who requires an accommodation in order to perform the essential functions of the job should contact the GCC Title IX Coordinator with day-to-day personnel responsibilities and request such an accommodation. The individual with the disability should specify what accommodation he or she needs to perform the job. GCC then will conduct an investigation to identify the barriers that interfere with the equal opportunity of the applicant or employee to perform his or her job. GCC will identify possible accommodations, if any, that will help eliminate the limitation. If the accommodation is reasonable and will not impose an undue hardship, the GCC will make the accommodation.

GCC prohibits the discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying of any individual on any of the basis listed above. For information about the types of conduct that constitute harassment and GCC’s internal procedures for addressing complaints of harassment, please refer below to GCC’s Board Policy Prohibiting Unlawful Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation (BP 1118 ). The above policy applies to all areas of employment including recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, compensation, benefits, etc. It is the responsibility of every employee to conscientiously follow this policy.

Policy Prohibiting Unlawful Harassment, Discrimination, and Relatiation

GCC is committed to providing a work and educational atmosphere that is free of unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation based upon: race (which includes historically associated traits, such as hair styles and protective hair styles, e.g., braids, locks and twists); color; gender (including gender identity and gender expression); sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions); religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices); marital/registered domestic partner status; age (forty (40) and over); national origin or ancestry (including native language spoken); physical or mental disability (including HIV and AIDS); medical condition (including cancer and genetic characteristics); taking a leave of absence authorized by law; genetic information; sexual orientation; military and veteran status; or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws.

Employees, volunteers, unpaid interns, individuals in apprenticeship programs, and independent contractors shall not be harassed, or discriminated or retaliated against, based upon the characteristics noted above.

GCC does not condone and will not tolerate unlawful harassment, discrimination, or retaliation on the part of any employee (including supervisors and managers) or third party (including independent contractors or other person with which the GCC does business). Supervisors and managers are to report any complaints of unlawful harassment to the Principal or designee.

When GCC receives allegations of unlawful harassment, discrimination, or retaliation, the Board (if a complaint is about the Principal) or the Principal or designee will conduct a fair, timely and thorough investigation that provides all parties an appropriate process and reaches reasonable conclusions based on the evidence collected. The investigation will be handled in as confidential a manner as possible, although complete confidentiality cannot be guaranteed. Complainants and witnesses shall not be subject to retaliation for making complaints in good faith or participating in an investigation. GCC is committed to remediating any instances where investigation findings demonstrate unlawful harassment, discrimination, or retaliation has occurred.

Prohibited Unlawful Harassment

- Verbal conduct such as epithets, derogatory jokes or comments or slurs;
- Physical conduct including assault, unwanted touching, intentionally blocking normal movement, or interfering with work because of sex, race or any other protected basis; • Retaliation for reporting or threatening to report harassment; or
- Disparate treatment based on any of the protected classes above.

Prohibited Unlawful Sexual Harassment

GCC is committed to providing a workplace free of sexual harassment and considers such harassment to be a major offense, which may result in disciplinary action, up to, and including dismissal, of the offending employee.

Sexual harassment consists of sexual advances, request for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, regardless of whether or not the conduct is motivated by sexual desire, when: (1) submission to the conduct is either made explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment; (2) an employment decision is based upon an individual’s acceptance or rejection of that conduct; (3) that conduct interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.

It is also unlawful to retaliate in any way against an employee who has articulated a good faith concern about sexual harassment against him or her or against another individual.

All supervisors of staff will receive sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation training within six (6) months of their assumption of a supervisory position and will receive further training once every two (2) years thereafter. Such training will address all legally required topics, including information about the negative effects that abusive conduct has on both the victim of the conduct and others in the workplace, as well as methods to prevent abusive conduct undertaken with malice a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests. Abusive conduct includes but is not limited to repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets, verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance. Supervisors shall also be trained on how to appropriately respond when the supervisor becomes aware that an employee is the target of unlawful harassment. Other staff will receive sexual harassment training and/or instruction concerning sexual harassment in the workplace as required by law.

Each employee has the responsibility to maintain a workplace free from any form of sexual harassment. Consequently, should any individual, in particular those with supervisory responsibilities, become aware of any conduct that may constitute sexual harassment or other prohibited behavior, immediate action should be taken to address such conduct. Any employee who believes they have been sexually harassed or has witnessed sexual harassment is encouraged to immediately report such harassment to the Principal. See Appendix A of BP 11-18 for the “Harassment/Discrimination/Retaliation Complaint Form.”

Sexual harassment may include, but is not limited to:

- Physical assaults of a sexual nature, such as:
  - Rape, sexual battery, molestation or attempts to commit these assaults and
  - Intentional physical conduct that is sexual in nature, such as touching, pinching, patting, grabbing, brushing against another’s body, or poking another’s body.
- Unwanted sexual advances, propositions or other sexual comments, such as:
  - Sexually oriented gestures, notices, remarks, jokes, or comments about a person’s sexuality or sexual experience.
  - Preferential treatment or promises of preferential treatment to an individual for submitting to sexual conduct, including soliciting or attempting to solicit any individual to engage in sexual activity for compensation or reward or deferential treatment for rejecting sexual conduct.
  - Subjecting or threats of subjecting an employee to unwelcome sexual attention or conduct or intentionally making performance of the employee’s job more difficult because of the employee’s sex.
- Sexual or discriminatory displays or publications anywhere in the workplace or educational environment, such as:
  - Displaying pictures, cartoons, posters, calendars, graffiti, objections, promotional materials, reading materials, or other materials that are sexually suggestive, sexually demeaning or pornographic or bringing to work or possessing any such material to read, display or view at work;
  - Reading publicly or otherwise publicizing in the work or educational environment materials that are in any way sexually revealing, sexually suggestive, sexually demeaning or pornographic; and
  - Displaying signs or other materials purporting to segregate an individual by sex in an area of the workplace or educational environment (other than restrooms or similar rooms).

The illustrations of harassment and sexual harassment above are not to be construed as an allinclusive list of prohibited acts under this policy. Moreover, please note that while in most situations a personal relationship is a private matter, these relationships are not appropriate in a professional setting, particularly where one of the parties has management or supervisory responsibilities. As such, consensual relationships in the workplace may violate GCC policy.

At-Will Employment

All employment at GCC is “at-will”. At-will employees and the employer have the right to terminate employment at any time, with or without advance notice, and with or without cause. Generally, employees also may be demoted or disciplined and the terms of their employment may be altered at any time, with or without cause, at the discretion of the Superintendent/CEO or designee and/or the GCC Board of Directors.

In cases where GCC, in its sole discretion, determines that remediation may be effective in correcting employee performance and/or conduct, GCC may suggest remediation without altering the at-will employment relationship.

GCC reserves the right to decrease or eliminate an employee’s salary, hours or work year based upon, among other things, student enrollment, program demand, change in program direction, restructuring, budget considerations or if it is deemed to be in the best interest of the program by the employee’s supervisor and/or the Superintendent/CEO.

No one other than the Superintendent/CEO (with GCC Board of Directors ratification) has the authority to alter this at-will arrangement, to enter into an agreement for employment for a specified period of time, or to make any agreement contrary to this policy, and any such agreement must be in writing, must expressly state that it is changing the at-will relationship, and must be signed by the Superintendent/CEO or designee and by the affected employee.