Employment Agreements

From: Jennifer Kennedy
Email: jenken@comcast.net
Date: February 10, 2005

Comments

I am a board member working on personnel matters for a not-for-profit nursery school in Illinois. One of my current projects is to redraft our employment contract for teachers. Currently, the school refers to staff contracts as "work proposals" and there seems to be a reluctance among the director and staff to call them "contracts". I have a couple examples of employment agreements from similar institutions and they similarly don't use the word contract. In fact, one of them states, "This letter serves as a non-contractual agreement...". Is there any reason, legal or otherwise, to refrain from using the word "contract"? Just to give a little more information, the contract clearly gives a time period for employment. Thank you for your time.