Revere, 063017 MSAGO, AGO 2017-194

• Case Date: June 30, 2017
• Court: Mississippi

Ryan Revere AGO 2017-194 No. 2017-00194 Mississippi Attorney General Opinions June 30, 2017          AUTH: Beebe Garrard          RQNM: Ryan Revere          SUBJ: Schools - Miscellaneous          SBCD: 187          TEXT: Ryan Revere          South Panola School District Attorney          Post Office Drawer 1586          Batesville, MS 38606          Re: Profits earned by a school store          Dear Mr. Revere:          Attorney General Jim Hood has received your opinion request and has assigned it to me for research and reply.          Issues Presented          According to your request, the South Panola School District (“District”) is considering the operation of a South Panola Team Store (“Team Store”) that would sell items customized with the South Panola logo, colors and teams to the general public. Specifically, you provide:

The students enrolled in the Foundations of Journalism class, along with District faculty and staff, would be responsible for the management and operations of the Team Store. The main purpose of this Team Store is to educate the students through invaluable hands on experience of allowing them to help operate an enterprise as if it were their own. This experience would be extremely beneficial to the students to prepare them for life after school. Obviously, one of the “by-products” to this Team Store could be the generation of a profit for the District. The District does not know if a Team Store could even generate a profit at this point in time. As stated earlier, the main objective of the Team Store is to help the District educate and prepare the students for their futures as part of the educational curriculum, and not to generate any profits. Any profit would be purely ancillary to the overall goal of educating the students and helping develop their skills.

         You then ask two questions, which we answer below.          Question: Can the District operate the aforementioned Team store in the manner...