Court Opinion

ID: 9618594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:14:01.211066+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:30.639437
License: Public Domain

Benham, Presiding Justice,
concurring specially.
Although I agree with the majority opinion that this case involving the authority of a school district to own and operate telecommunications facilities falls outside the provisions of OCGA § 20-2-1160, I write separately to express my concern that this court has not given the school boards and superior courts of this state sufficient guidance in this area. The majority opinion cites numerous cases applying — or refusing to apply — the statute, but it has not provided a useful guide for such cases, continuing instead with the case-by-case basis on which issues in this area have been decided. Such an approach unduly burdens those involved in public education, making it almost impossible to determine whether a particular controversy must first be ad*528dressed through administrative procedures.
Decided June 5, 1995
Reconsideration denied June 30, 1995.
McKee & Barge, R. Mason Barge, for appellants.
Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, Jane E. Fahey, J. Scott McClain, for appellees.
As an analytical guide in this area, I would propose a simple rule: issues as to which a school board is uniquely qualified to make decisions, and as to which a school board must exercise discretion, must be first considered in the administrative process established by the statute; other issues may be taken up initially in court. Such a rule would fit the cases cited in the majority opinion and would eliminate the hit-or-miss approach which parties and practitioners have been forced to use. In the instant case, application of that rule would demand the conclusion that the issues at bar could be presented directly to a court. That is so because the ownership and operation of telecommunications facilities is not something with regard to which a school board is uniquely qualified to make decisions, notwithstanding that the school district involved in this case has been operating one of the stations in question for almost 50 years and the other for almost 40 years.
While I agree with the result of this case, I regret that this court has passed up an opportunity to provide clarity to an area of law clouded with doubt. That clarity could have been provided, I believe, by merely applying the rule proposed in this concurrence.
I am authorized to state that Justice Carley joins in this special concurrence.