Court Opinion

ID: 9669695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:06:36.744635+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:59.837690
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
SIMPSON, Justice.
Respondent contends that enactment of the placement bill froze every student in the school he had been attending previously, and further that local boards are thereafter prohibited from transferring any student or group of students without a finding by the board or its authority that such transfer is as to each individual pupil consistent with the test of the public and educational policy governing the admission and placement of pupils in the public school system prescribed by the act.
We are of the opinion that respondent is mistaken only in his original premise : the Act was one designed to give the public school system flexibility, not rigidity; thus it did not so freeze pupils to their schools. Rather, it gave the local board full authority to place and replace students within its jurisdiction. The primary purpose of the Act was to fix responsibility for placement; the method chosen was the granting of wide discretionary powers to the local school board.
In seeking the legislative intent, we note from the House Journal that Act 201 as adopted was a substitute bill. When originally introduced as H.B. 296 it sought to create a placement board in each school district and empower that board to review school attendance rolls for placement of pupils. A comparative reading of Act 201 reveals that this provision was omitted; review of school rolls is not mentioned. The Act provides for the local board to determine pupil placement based on its own findings.
The Act as a whole must be construed as a broadening of the powers of local school boards because of its repeal of restrictive Code sections; viz., §§ 56, 93, 163, 167, 318, and 319 of Title 52, 1940 Code. Further, the Act in § 4 contemplates that the board shall possess full authority within its own district. It is inconceivable that one board may have juris*39diction within the district of another except with the consent of the home hoard. Thus the provisions for pupils’ attendance of school outside their home district we deem to he permissive. Hence the withdrawal of county children from a city school by the county board does not, in our view, constitute a violation of the spirit of the Act, nor does it prima facie show an overstepping of the board’s authority. The requirement for such act is that the board base its action on findings that such transfer or placement is as to each individual pupil consistent with tests of the public and educational policy prescribed by the Act, viz.: (§ 4)
“ * * * In the assignment, transfer or continuance of pupils among and within the schools, or within the classroom and other facilities thereof, the following factors and the effect or results thereof shall be considered, with respect to the individual pupil, as well as other relevant matters: Available room and teaching capacity in the various schools; the availability of transportation facilities; the effect of the admission of new pupils upon established or proposed academic programs; the suitability of established curricula for particular pupils; the adequacy of the pupil’s academic preparation for admission to a particular school and curriculum; the scholastic aptitude and relative intelligence or mental energy or ability of the pupil; * * * ” etc.
Until tested by the objection and appeal of a pupil’s parent or guardian as prescribed by the Act, we are unwilling to say that the board has in the instance before us acted without the necessary preliminary findings.
Application overruled.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and GOODWYN and MAYFIELD, JJ., concur.