Request By:
Hon. Jim C. Coleman
Attorney at Law
Metcalfe County School Board
P.O. Box 119
Edmonton, Kentucky 42129
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederic J. Cowan, Attorney General; Perry T. Ryan, Assistant Attorney General
You recently wrote a letter to this office in which you request an Opinion of the Attorney General in response to the following question:
May a local Board of Education impose a ban on coming upon school premises and [attending] school related functions on said premises upon an adult (non-student) , previously notified in writing of such ban, but otherwise open to the general public upon payment of the cost of admission, when such bar/ban is based upon prior illegal activities . . .?
With limited exceptions as provided for open meetings of public agencies in KRS 61.840, we are of the opinion that a local school board may prohibit non-students from entering upon school property, irrespective of the nature of activities which at the time are being conducted upon the property.
First, KRS 160.290(1) invests power in the local board of education to "have control and management of . . . public school property of its district and may use such . . . property to promote public education in such ways as it deems necessary and proper." Secondly, the statutes provide no right to non-students to attend school functions or to be present on school grounds, at any time, except under the Open Meetings laws as provided in KRS 61.840.
One question which arises is whether a person authorized by the school board to sell tickets to the general public is an agent of the school board. We are of the opinion that a person who is authorized by the school board to sell admission tickets to a school event is in fact an agent of the school board. Even a student ticket salesperson who has not reached the age of legal majority can be a subagent of the school board if he has been somehow authorized by a school official to sell tickets. An agent is simply "one who acts for or in the place of another by authority from him; one who undertakes to transact some business or manage some affairs for another by authority and on account of the latter, and to render an account of it." Thomas B. Jeffrey Co. v. Lockridge, 173 Ky. 282, 190 S.W. 1103, 1105 (1917), quoting 2 Corpus Juris, 420.
A more difficult question presented in your letter, however, is whether an agent who sells a ticket to a person who has been banished from the school property by action of the school board may, in effect, waive the school board's order by selling an admission ticket to the person so barred. The weight of caselaw which deals with this area of the law of agency appears to be summarized as follows:
A person can not bind a principle to a contract or conveyance because of apparent authority or inherent agency power, if he should know, has reason to know, or has been notified that the agent is not authorized to make it.
W. Seavey, Law of Agency, § 76. Professor Seavey further states,
A person has reason to know or should know that an agent is not authorized, if a reasonable person in his position, knowing what he knows or should have learned, would believed or suspect that the agent is not authorized.
Id. See also American Law Institute, Restatement of the Law Second: Agency, § 125(c). We are of the opinion that when a person has been notified that the school board has forbidden him from attending any school functions on school property, the person "has reason to know or should know" that the agent is not authorized by the principle, the school board, to sell him an admission ticket. The contractual relationship inherent in the sale of the admission ticket is thus null and void. When the person who is forbidden from entering upon the premises actually enters the property, he is a trespasser and may be subject to both civil and criminal penalties.
Regardless of the principle-agency relationship which is created between the school board and the individuals who are authorized to sell admission tickets to school events, the courts of Kentucky have held that an admission ticket is a license to attend the event which is revocable at the will of the proprietor, which in this case is the school board and its agents. Capital Theatre Co. v. Compton, Ky., 246 Ky. 130, 54 S.W.2d 620 (1933). Once a person is asked to leave the premises, he is obliged to do so, and he is entitled to a prompt refund of the admission price. Id. Ky. at 134, S.W.2d at 621. If he refuses to leave after being so requested, he becomes a trespasser and is subject to civil sanctions for trespass to real property as well as criminal penalties. KRS 511.070 provides criminal penalties for individuals who knowingly enter or remain in school buildings without proper authority to do so. Additionally, KRS 511.080 provides criminal penalties for individuals who knowingly enter or unlawfully remain upon the premises of a school without authority to do so.
We are of the opinion that when a board of education notifies a non-student that he may not enter upon school grounds, the "knowing" requirement of KRS 511.070 and KRS 511.080 is satisfied. When the person enters the school building or premises, the remainder of the elements of the offense are satisfied.