Trustees of Slaughterville Graded School Dist. v. Brooks

• Decision Date: 26 February 1915
• Citation: 173 S.W. 305,163 Ky. 200
• Parties: TRUSTEES OF SLAUGHTERVILLE GRADED SCHOOL DIST. v. BROOKS ET AL.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

173 S.W. 305

163 Ky. 200

TRUSTEES OF SLAUGHTERVILLE GRADED SCHOOL DIST. v. BROOKS ET AL.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

February 26, 1915

Appeal from Circuit Court, Webster County.

Action by B. M. Brooks and others against the Trustees of Slaughterville Graded School District. From a judgment granting relief, defendant appeals. Reversed, with directions.

Gordon & Gordon & Cox, of Madisonville, for appellant.

Wm. H Yost, of Madisonville, and Hunt & Bennett, of Dixon, for appellees.

TURNER J.

Prior to 1912, there had been established and was then in existence the Slaughterville graded school district in Webster county. During that year, upon the petition of a majority of the legal voters in the adjacent territory, wholly in Hopkins county but adjacent to the Slaughterville graded school district, the trustees of that district, by an order on its books, annexed to the Slaughterville graded school district certain territory in Hopkins county comprising a part of four common school districts therein. In June, 1914, after due notice, there was held in the Slaughterville graded school district, including the annexed territory in Hopkins county an election to take the sense of the voters of the graded school district as to whether there should be issued by the trustees thereof $4,500 in bonds; the proceeds to be used in providing suitable grounds, school buildings, furniture, and apparatus for said graded school district under the authority of section 4481 of the Kentucky Statutes. The required number of votes having been received, the proposition was declared to have been carried, and the trustees were preparing to issue the bonds.

This is an action by a number of taxpayers, part of them living in the limits of the original district and part of them in that part of the district annexed from Hopkins county, wherein it is sought to enjoin the proposed bond issue upon four grounds, viz.: (1) Because section 4464b of the Kentucky Statutes is unconstitutional, in that it authorizes the taxation of property in the annexed territory without notice or opportunity to protest by the residents thereof, and would therefore be taking their property without due process of law. (2) Because the procedure provided by the statute for the annexation of property in an adjacent county was not followed because of the failure to notify the county judge, school superintendent, or any of the authorities of Hopkins county of the proposed annexation. (3) Because at the time the election was called there were only four members of the board of the graded school district, when the statute requires five members thereof; and, as there was a vacancy in the board, it thereby lost its entity and could take no binding action until the vacancy was filled. (4) That there was no such record of the proceedings of the board as is required by law it being alleged that the proceedings were first written out on detached paper and then merely fastened in the record book by pins and clips, and that it is therefore not such a record as is contemplated by section 4473 of the Kentucky Statutes. The circuit court overruled the demurrer to the petition and intervening pleadings of the taxpayers and enjoined the school trustees from issuing or selling any of the bonds so authorized.

Section 4464b of the Kentucky Statutes is an act of March, 1906, and the first subsection thereof is as follows:

"Any graded common school district organized and existing under any special act of the Legislature, and any such district that has been or may be hereafter organized under the general laws of this state, may, by and with the written consent of a majority of the legal voters in the territory to be added, extend the limits of such district so as to include such additional territory as the board of education, or trustees of such district, may desire to take within the limits and add to such district."

It is under the authority of this act that the trustees assumed to annex to the Slaughterville graded school district in Webster county the adjacent territory in Hopkins county, and it is this action of the board of trustees, under that act, which the taxpayers assert deprives them of their property without due process of law under the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the federal Constitution. The determination of this question involves: (1) Whether the Legislature has the power to designate what territory shall constitute school districts, and change the same when it may see fit; and (2) whether it may delegate such authority to subordinate governmental agencies.

It has been held in this state that it is entirely within the discretion of the General Assembly to designate the size of common school districts. Crook v. Bartlett, 155 Ky. 305, 159 S.W. 826, that was a case which involved the right of women to participate in the election of county school superintendent. Section 155 of the Kentucky Constitution provides that other provisions of the Constitution, fixing qualifications of voters, "shall not apply to the election of school trustees and other common school district elections." It was argued in that case that the word "district," as used in section 155, referred only to a part of a county, and that, as the county school superintendent was elected by the voters of the whole county, it was not within the power of the General Assembly to make the entire county a school district, and thereby authorize women to vote for such official; but the court, in answer to that contention, said:

"A common school district has no permanently fixed boundary. It may embrace the whole of a

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