Request By:
Mrs. Vickie Smith Stovall
Daviess County Public Schools
P.O. Box 1510
Owensboro, Kentucky 42301
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As a member of the Daviess County Board of Education you have asked the Office of the Attorney General for an opinion relative to student attendance area policies. You stated in your letter that the Daviess County Board of Education has established attendance areas within the school district and that, generally, students are required to attend the school located in the attendance area where they reside. The situation you have requested this office to consider stems from requests by parents who wish to enroll their children in a school outside the attendance area in which they reside. Your specific question was stated as follows:
"May the Board of Education of Daviess County adopt an enrollment policy permitting the parents of students residing in Daviess County to enroll their children in schools outside the usual attendance area and require payment of tuition for these students?"
In your letter you noted that the Daviess County Public Schools have a policy that permits a student who resides outside the geographic boundaries of the school district to attend the Daviess County schools by paying tuition. You indicated that several parents, including teachers in the Daviess County school system who reside outside the Daviess County school district, are permitted under this policy to enroll their children in the Daviess County School upon payment of the tuition charge. This policy is well in keeping with Kentucky school law. See KRS 158.120, 158.130. The policy must be nondiscriminatory and not arbitrary or capricious. The policy must treat all nonresident students the same. Nonresident students whose parents are employed in the Daviess County school system should get no preferential treatment. See OAG 67-87 and 67-48, copies attached.
You further stated in your letter that it is contended by parents living within the Daviess County School District who desire to enroll their children in a school in an attendance area other than in which they reside that this privilege should be permitted if they pay tuition because this same privilege is accorded to persons who live in a different school district. We entirely disagree with this line of thinking. The factors to be considered by a school board before establishing a policy permitting nonresident children to attend school in the school district are significantly different from those relating to a policy on attendance area selection. Certainly a board of education may choose to have a policy on one or the other without any compulsion to have a policy on each.
In light of the above, we believe it is evident that the answer to your question is simply that it is within the broad discretionary power of a local board of education whether to adopt such a policy. Under the authority of KRS 160.290(1), each local board of education is mandated to have "general control and management of the public schools in its district." We believe this includes the power to adopt an attendance area policy such as you described in your letter.