Tobacco Fines for Bullitt Students May Not be Legal

The Bullitt County Board of Education is considering a new policy that would give school officials the option of imposing a five dollar fine on high school students who are caught with tobacco products on campus. But the Kentucky School Boards Association has some legal questions about the proposal.K-S-B-A spokesperson Brad Hughes says the Kentucky statute on which the district is basing the policy specifies a student must be caught smoking, not carrying tobacco products. And – he says – there’s another problem with the proposal."What’s unclear to us is that the law doesn’t specifically give the school the legal authority to collect a fine, and typically in Kentucky law, fines are collected by courts, or if they’re specified, a city or county or something like that, this law doesn’t do that," he said.The attorney for Bullitt County Schools has reviewed the statute and advised the district to proceed.You can see the KRS here.