Request By:
Mr. Robert Polston
Superintendent
Clinton County Schools
Albany, Kentucky 42602
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As the Superintendent of the Clinton County Schools you have asked the Office of the Attorney General for an opinion concerning Kentucky's teacher tenure law. As background to your question you have stated that a teacher has obtained tenure in a school district in Kentucky and then moves to another school district in Kentucky. However, the teacher does not immediately take employment with the school district to which he has moved. You asked whether this teacher after this period of not teaching at all upon taking employment in the latter school district would be entitled to teacher tenure after a one-year probationary period. That is, must a teacher with tenure who leaves one school district take employment in another district without any lapse in school years in order to retain tenure status.
It is our opinion that the teacher under the circumstances given above is not entitled to tenure after a one-year probationary period under Kentucky's portable teacher tenure statute. We believe OAG 74-421, copy attached, is fully in support of this conclusion. The facts underlying that opinion were of a teacher who once had tenure but who did not teach at all during the year just past because he had been dismissed or had resigned the year before and subsequently was employed for the upcoming year in a new district. This office stated that: "[S]uch a teacher would not carry tenure into the new district nor could he acquire tenure after only one year of probationary status in the new district. Only by returning to employment in his old district would the teacher be able to reestablish tenure after only one year. After tenure is reestablished, the teacher may then carry it to any other district. The 'four years out of six' provision only applies within a single district."
The language of the portable tenure statute, KRS 161.740 (1)(c), supports the above construction:
"(1) Teachers eligible for continuing service status in any school district shall be those teachers who meet qualifications listed in this section:
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(c) When a teacher has attained continuing contract status in one (1) district and becomes employed in another district, said teacher shall retain that status provided, however, that a district may require a one-year probationary period of service in that district before granting that status."
This language calls for continuity of teacher service from one school district to another. Any other construction would permit lapse of unlimited time between teaching service in one school district and another. If the lapse has been long enough, a one-year probationary period could be wholly insufficient to afford an opportunity for the second school district to evaluate the teacher's performance before a tenure contract would have to be considered.