Request By:
Mrs. Wilda Jo Davis, Chairperson
Carroll County School Board
Carrollton, Kentucky 41008
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As Chairperson of the Carroll County School Board you have asked the Office of the Attorney General to consider the legal effect of a policy regarding administrative employment which was recently passed by the board with a 3 - 2 vote. You noted that the proposed policy was prepared and distributed by a single board member at a regular board meeting. You further stated that the superintendent of school another board member and yourself had no prior knowledge about or input to this proposed policy. The policy was adopted at the same meeting at which it was first presented. You went on in your letter to say that the adoption of this policy came without an opportunity to study or evaluate it and that the local superintendent was not allowed to make comment or recommendation.
Without really getting to the substantive merit of the policy, although we have serious reservations about the policy from this viewpoint in that its effect would appear to undermine and usurp some of the authority of the superintendent, we believe this policy is void due to the failure to follow the statutory procedure prescribed relative to preparation of rules, regulations, bylaws and statements of policy by a local board of education.
While KRS 160.290(2) requires local boards of education to adopt rules and regulations concerning the schools in the district, the manner in which this task is to be carried out is provided for in KRS 160.370. This section of our school laws directs that the local superintendent of schools is to be the "executive agent of the board that appoints him" and that the local superintendent is also to be "the professional adviser of the board in all matters." KRS 160.370 further reads in pertinent part that:
"He (the superintendent) shall prepare, under the direction of the board, all rules, regulations, bylaws and statements of policy for approval and adoption by the board."
It is the opinion of this office that the "Administrative Employment Policy" passed by the Carroll County Board of Education was not handled in a manner in keeping with the above-quoted provisions of KRS 160.370 and that it was therefore void ab initio, that is, from the beginning, and can have no force or legal effect.