Request By:
The Honorable Gene Huff
The Senate of Kentucky
State Capitol
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederic J. Cowan, Attorney General; Anne E. Keating, Assistant Attorney General
In your recent letter you requested an opinion of the Attorney General interpreting KRS 160.380(2), as amended by House Bill 940 in the 1990 General Assembly. KRS 160.380(2) states in pertinent part:
(g) No principal's relative shall be employed in the principal's school, except a relative who is not the principal's spouse and who is employed in the principal's school during the 1989-90 school year. No spouse of a principal shall be employed in the principal's school, except the principal's spouse who was employed in the principal's school during the 1989-90 school year for whom there is no position for which the spouse is certified to fill in another school operated in the district. The provisions of KRS 161.760 shall not apply to any transfer made in order to comply with the provisions of this paragraph.
Your particular question is whether an assistant principal and his or her spouse may work in the same school without violating that section. You pointed out that in the situation presented, the assistant principal's spouse is a certified employee and both parties have nearly twenty years of service in education.
It is the opinion of this office that the term "principal's spouse" does not include spouses of an assistant principal, particularly where KRS 160.380 has expressly prohibited certain relationships. See subsections (2)(e), (f) and (g). In a recent opinion, OAG 90-68, this office noted that in the Kentucky Education Reform Act passed in 1990, the legislature enumerated specific classes of relatives prohibited from public employment in relation to board members or superintendents or principals. On other occasions when this office has been presented with similar inquiries related to the interpretation of KRS 160.180, this office was asked to determine whether the classes of relatives described by the statute included certain relationships by marriage. This office noted:
While those relationships could just as easily have been included in the statute, they were not . . . . It was the prerogative of the legislature to determine which relationships would disqualify a board member should he vote for appointments of relatives.
In the same manner, had the legislature wished to include spouses of assistant principals the legislature would have done so. It is a primary rule of statutory construction that the expression of one thing implies the exclusion of the other. Smith v. Weling, Ky., 303 S.W.2d 322 (1957). Accordingly, it is the opinion of this office that employment of a spouse of an assistant principal is not prohibited employment of a relative under KRS 160.380(2)(g).