Request By:
Honorable William E. Sloan
Wylie and Sloan
Attorneys at Law
Security Trust Building
Lexington, Kentucky 40507
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
On behalf of the Fayette County Public Schools you have requested an opinion from the Office of the Attorney General relative to whether a local board of education may adopt a personal leave policy for its noncertificated (classified) employees. You noted in your letter that the 1976 General Assembly, regular session, passed legislation which has now been codified as KRS 161.154 which permissively authorizes each district board of education to provide up to three personal leave days per school year to employees for whom certification is required without loss of salary to such employees and without affecting any other type of leave granted by law, regulation or school board policy.
An issue raised in your question is prompted by the language of KRS 161.154 limiting the application of its provisions to certificated school employees. As noted by you in your letter to this office, it is arguable that due to this language the General Assembly intended to provide that a personal leave day policy may only be adopted for certified employees of a local board of education and that this language was intended to negate the general power of a local board of education under KRS 160.290.
We do not believe the legislature intended to abrogate the general power of a local board of education. It is our opinion that a local board of education may enact such a personal leave policy for its noncertificated employees as it deems proper. Personnel and business questions such as the one you have presented may be addressed by a policy of a local board of education covering the question. See OAG 74-770, copy attached. By KRS 160.290 local boards of education are given plenary power to manage the business of their school districts. This section of our school laws reads in subsection (1) in pertinent part as follows:
"Each board shall have control and management of all school funds and all public school property of its district and may use such funds and property to promote public education in such ways as it deems necessary and proper. Each board shall exercise generally all powers in the administration of its public school system, appoint such officers, agents and employes as it deems necessary and proper, prescribe their duties, and fix their compensation and terms of office."
Moreover, since the statute pursuant to which a personal leave policy may be adopted for noncertificated employees is different from that for certified employees, the policies, if adopted, would not need to be parallel in provisions although they certainly may be. Cf. OAG 76-427.