## Facts

- The Floyd County Board of Education considered reorganizing its central-office administrative structure in late 1992 through early 1993 amid significant governance disruption and state scrutiny.
- Wayne Ratliff, Tommy Thompson, and Pete Grigsby were central-office administrators whose positions could be eliminated or altered depending on the reorganization plan selected.
- The Board held meetings on March 25, 27, and 30, and April 3, 1993, and entered closed “executive” sessions during these meetings.
- The minutes described the closed sessions’ purpose as “personnel” matters.
- After the April 3 executive session, the Board reconvened publicly and adopted a reorganization plan affecting the administrators’ positions.
- The administrators sued under the Kentucky Open Meetings Act (KRS 61.800–61.850), alleging the Board used executive sessions to discuss and decide general reorganization policy outside public view.
- The Board defended the closures as authorized by the Open Meetings Act’s personnel exception, KRS 61.810(1)(f).

## Issues

1. Whether the Board violated the Kentucky Open Meetings Act by using executive sessions to discuss and decide a central-office reorganization.
2. Whether KRS 61.810(1)(f) permits closed sessions for reorganization discussions when they concern employment consequences for identifiable employees.
3. Whether the Court of Appeals erred by displacing the trial court’s factual findings in concluding the closed sessions were impermissible policy-making.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the circuit court’s judgment for the Board.
- The Court held the Court of Appeals improperly substituted its own fact-finding for the trial court’s findings, which were not clearly erroneous.
- On the trial court’s factual findings, the executive sessions were permissible under KRS 61.810(1)(f) because they concerned personnel actions affecting identifiable administrators in connection with the reorganization.
- Injunctive relief against the Board was denied.

## Legal Principles

- The Open Meetings Act’s general policy of open government (KRS 61.800) bars secret formulation of public policy, but statutory exceptions in KRS 61.810(1) must be applied when supported by the facts.
- Under KRS 61.810(1)(f), a public body may meet in executive session to discuss matters that may lead to appointment, discipline, or dismissal of an identifiable employee, member, or officer.
- Executive-session exceptions cannot be expanded to cover broad, generalized policy discussions merely because personnel may be affected.
- Appellate review must defer to trial court fact-finding unless the findings are clearly erroneous; an appellate court may not reweigh evidence and effectively make new factual determinations in an Open Meetings Act case.

## Conclusion

The Kentucky Supreme Court reinstated the trial court’s ruling that the school board’s closed sessions were authorized by the personnel exception because, as found by the trial court, the discussions concerned specific personnel consequences of a reorganization rather than secret general policy-making.


Floyd Cnty. Bd. of Educ. v. Ratliff, 955 S.W.2d 921 (Ky. 1997)