Request By:
Mr. Fred D. Williams
Superintendent
Fort Thomas City Schools
2356 Memorial Parkway
Fort Thomas, Kentucky 41075
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederic J. Cowan, Attorney General; Anne E. Keating, Assistant Attorney General
In your letter to this office you requested an interpretation of the statute governing eligibility for continuing contract status. In particular, you stated that an English teacher who obtained continuing contract status in another district has been employed in the Ft. Thomas school system as follows: 1988-1989Part time, .6 percent of the dayfor the entire school year.1989-1990Part time, .6 percent of the dayfor the entire school year.1990-1991Full time, for the entire schoolyear.
Based on this history, you ask whether the teacher would be eligible for continuing contract status in the Ft. Thomas school district if re-employed prior to May 1, 1991, for a full-time teaching position in the Ft. Thomas school district for the 1991-1992 school year.
It is the Opinion of this Office that the teacher in question does not qualify for continuing contract status. KRS 161.740 states:
(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, the teacher shall retain that status. However, a district may require a one-year probationary period of service in that district before granting that status. For purposes of this subsection, the continuing contract of a teacher shall not be terminated when the teacher leaves employment, all provisions of KRS 161.720 to 161.810 to the contrary notwithstanding, and the continuing service contract shall be transferred to the next school district, under conditions set forth in this section, for a period of up to seven (7) months from the time employment in the first school district has terminated. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to give a teacher a right to re-employment in the first school district during the seven (7) month period following termination.
This office has previously noted that KRS 161.720(2) requires that the school year during which a teacher works must include 7 school months of service in order to qualify as a "year" when determining eligibility for a "continuing service contract. " OAG 82-614. In the situation presented in that Opinion, a teacher who had worked half-time for 4 school years was granted tenure by the local board. This Office concluded that none of the years of service met the statutory requirement and the tenure granted was void.
That Opinion relied, also, on OAG 76-278 in which this Office stated that a teacher must have taught at least 140 days of 6 hours in the 185 day school term to get credit for a year under the tenure law. In the situation that you present to this Office, the teacher came to your district with tenure in another district, but did not work full-time until the 1990-1991 school year. Under KRS 161.720(2), the part-time service for school years 1988-1990 does not qualify for consideration for eligibility for tenure.
This Office has also concluded that a teacher with tenure in one district must achieve tenure in the second district within the statutory time period. OAG 81-619. Shortly after the "portable tenure law" was enacted, in 1982, this Office noted that it applied to "any teacher who either had already resigned or who since July 15, 1982, ha[d] resigned and seven months ha[d] not elapsed since the resignation. " OAG 81-619, p. 2-656. This is consistent with the language of KRS 161.740(1)(c) which states that "the continuing service contract will be transferred to the next school district, under conditions herein set forth, for a period of up to seven (7) months from the time employment in the first school district has terminated. " In other words, when a teacher with tenure in one district resigns and becomes employed in a second district, if the second district requires a year of probation, the teacher must complete probation during the time period that the teacher retains status in the former district.
This position is consistent with a decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court in which a teacher who had obtained tenure in one county district then resigned and taught in a second county district for one year. Next the teacher obtained employment in a third county district where he taught for three years. When the teacher was not re-employed by the third district, he alleged that he had tenure, based on his status in the first school district. The Court held that 161.740(1)(c) was not available to the teacher who, due to his resignation in the first district, had no continuing service status to retain upon his employment in the third county district.