Request By:
Mr. John P. Kirkham
Attorney at Law
1404 South Virginia Street
Hopkinsville, Kentucky 42240
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
As attorney for the Christian County Board of Education and on behalf of the Board you have requested an opinion of the Attorney General concerning the Open Meetings Law, KRS 61.805-61.850. You state that the Board is presently considering applicants for the office of Superintendent of Schools, and has been conducting interviews with applicants in closed session in the manner we approved in OAG 77-392; to assist the Board in interviewing the applicants and evaluating their qualifications the Board would like to form a select committee of eleven persons representative of the various professional levels of educational training which will sit with the Board in closed session while candidates are interviewed and discussions are held; you ask our opinion as to whether this procedure is proper under the Open Meetings Law.
In OAG 77-392 we took into account information supplied to us to the effect that many school administrators who apply for a particular superintendency desire that their application be considered confidentially to avoid any disruption in their relationship with their current employer and we opined that since the superintendent is an employee of a board of education, candidates for that position may be interviewed, compared, discussed and eliminated in a closed session under the provisions of KRS 61.810(6). We stated that final action electing a superintendent should be taken in an open meeting.
We addressed the question of who should be permitted to sit in with a board in a closed session in OAG 77-560. We stated:
"Any person who the board believes can contribute information or advice on the subject matter under discussion may be invited into the executive session but should remain only so long as is necessary to make his contribution to the discussion.
". . . A public agency should not invite certain people to be merely spectators in a closed session and at the same time bar certain other people from being spectators. "
We see no violation of the Open Meetings Law in the proposal of the Board to have a select committee sit with it and take an active part in interviews and discussions. Such a procedure comports with OAG 77-392 and OAG 77-560, a copy of each of which is enclosed.