Request By:
Mr. D. W. Fryrear, Sr.
Superintendent
Campbellsville Independent School District
230 West Main Street
Campbellsville, Kentucky 42718
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Assistant Deputy Attorney General and Chief Counsel
As Superintendent of the Campbellsville Independent School District, you have asked the Office of the Attorney General for advice concerning the practice of holding back a student in school for athletic purposes. You presented two questions for our review:
1. Consider that the school by passing a student has made an affirmative determination as to the child's capability to do work at the next highest grade level; and, the school is able to make a positive determination as to the child's emotional growth and maturity does a parent have the absolute right to overrule the school and demand that the child be retained in the last grade level.
2. If a parent does have that right for athletic or other reasons does the tax payer have to pay for it (the cost of educating a child for a year or should there be a special tuition fee charged).
It is the position of the Office of the Attorney General that retention and promotion of pupils is entirely a matter of local board of education policy and not a matter for control by parents.
This office primarily addressed the subject of your letter in OAG 75-603, copy attached. Citing a well known book on Law and Public Schools, we noted that "in conducting schools, boards of education may establish standards for promotion of pupils from one grade to the next and for continuing pupils as members of any particular grade or class." We concluded that a local board of education may adopt a policy that all children must be advanced to the next grade if they are passed or promoted by their teachers. See KRS 160.290 and cf. KRS 158.140. The corollary to this conclusion is, of course, that parents do not have a right to demand that a child be retained at a particular grade level for any reason.
You mention "the practice of holding back a student in school for athletic purposes." As to this aspect of the issue, we bring to your attention the regulation of the State Board of Education which forbids so called "red-shirting". See 703 KAR 2:070, copy attached.
We trust the above is adequately responsive to your questions.