Request By:
Mr. Ralph D. Tucker, Superintendent
Breckinridge County Schools
Hardinsburg, Kentucky 40143
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Attorney General
As the Superintendent of the Breckinridge County Schools you have asked the Office of the Attorney General to render an advisory opinion regarding the Breckinridge County Board of Education designating attendance areas and drawing boundary lines in order to maintain a level of enrollment in some of our smaller schools. You specifically have asked the following two questions:
"Can a local Board of Education designate an attendance school area and draw boundary lines and require students within those boundaries to attend the designated school?"
Does the fact that there is a school board election in the year that a Board of Education may desire to designate an attendance area have any effect as to whether a Board of Education may legally designate attendance areas and draw boundary lines during that year?"
We construe your questions to not relate to the changing of boundary lines required to divide a local school district into five divisions. The statute governing this matter in detail is KRS 160.210. What we do understand you to be asking is whether the school board has authority to adopt a policy which will establish school attendance areas. Our answer to this question is in the affirmative. See OAG 77-736, copy attached. As we noted in that opinion, "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.'"
One additional point needs to be addressed concerning attendance areas. KRS 159.070 provides in part that each school district itself constitutes a separate attendance district. To the long standing provisions of this section of our school laws, the 1976 General Assembly added that "within the appropriate school district attendance area, parents or legal guardians shall be permitted to enroll for attendance their children in the public school nearest their home." 1976 House Bill 193, § 1. This measure was given emergency status and became effective upon approval by the governor on March 29, 1976. Shortly thereafter, in federal district court in Louisville, the plaintiffs in the Louisville-Jefferson County desegregation actions requested Judge James F. Gordon, Senior United States District Judge, to declare House Bill 193 as unconstitutional. Such declaration was made by Judge Gordon on May 5, 1976. This office has appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Oral argument on this matter will be heard June 13, 1978.
As for your second question, we believe a "school board election year" has nothing to do with the establishing of attendance areas. We note again that the scheduling of a change in boundary lines of divisions of county school districts is affected by a school board election. KRS 160.210(3).