CD: Starkville aldermen hold off on school board appointment

TIM PRATT

The Starkville Board of Aldermen was scheduled to interview the final candidates for a seat on the city school district’s Board of Trustees Thursday night, but instead delayed the appointment process due to questions over the eligibility of one of the candidates.

Candidate Ann Carr lives at 1108 Diamond Cove Lane, which is located outside Starkville corporate limits in Oktibbeha County, but in a portion of the county served by the Starkville School District. Eighteen percent of Starkville School District students and two school board members — Keith Coble and Bill Weeks — also live outside Starkville’s corporate limits, but within the school district’s boundaries, Ward 6 Alderman Roy A. Perkins said.

Carr is one of four candidates still in the running for the seat Board President Dr. Walter Taylor will vacate when he retires March 6. Conflicting opinions from the Mississippi attorney general’s office dating back to 1981, however, left the Board of Aldermen leery to continue with the interview process until it receives a new, official opinion from the attorney general’s office on Carr’s eligibility.

Attorney general opinions from 1991 and 2004 say anyone can serve on the school board as long as he or she lives within the school district. An attorney general opinion from 1981, however, states that only two school board members can live in an area added on to the original school district, like the portion of Oktibbeha County added to the Starkville School District, regardless of the percentage of the student population living there.

“What we have here is three attorney general’s opinions with one saying one thing and two saying the other,” City Attorney Chris Latimer said Thursday night. “The legality of this is more confusing in that the attorney general’s opinion from 1981 is tighter factually. It fits these facts more than the other two do and, in the opinion of the law, the more specific the law is, it’s going to control the more general law, even if the general law is more recent.”

Read complete article at Commercial Dispatch.