Ethics and Education

1)
Standard 1.2: A band district in a certain school district knowingly pocketed money from the ordering of band equipment and materials for the dance team. To do this, the director took the order requests from the other directors and then told them he would take care of the ordering. He told the directors a price that was too high and then kept the extra money. This was discovered and the director was removed from his position.

Standard 1.8: I actually believe the most school districts have become good about nepotism issues and put practices in place that prevent. One such school district did so after a very obvious conflict of issue occurred at one of the district’s high schools. The principal hired his daughter for a position that she was not qualified for. While her major in college did correspond, she had failed to pass the certification test and was hired on a probationary contract with an emergency certification. There were many other candidates qualified for the job that were passed over, and the daughter has since done a fairly poor job in this position. This district put into place rules where no parent or spouse can be the boss of another family member, and if the family member of a school board member applies for a job, that board member must resign and be replaced before that family member can accept a position in the district.

Standard 1.10: There is a very well know situation in a certain school district in Texas that is a perfect example of where individuals in district and campus leadership were not good role models. A counselor in the district was accused of having an affair with not one but multiple campus and district administrators. The end result of the investigation was the superintendent, who was not accused of being a part of this web, was forced to resign for lack of institutional control and those involved in the web were either fired or given different jobs in the district.

Standard 2.4: This is a very sensitive issue and there seems to actually be too much political correctness in this area. Following the 2008 Presidential Election, teachers who supported Barack Obama wore shirts with his image and were not told anything about it. However, during the 2010 Gubernatorial Election, teachers with Rick Perry stickers on their vehicles were criticized though not told to remove the stickers. This double standard was very obvious and very upsetting.

Standard 2.7: While this principal was not reported to SBEC, she did discriminate against those on her campus who had requested an in-district transfer to another school. With this being a public list, the principal could see who wanted to leave the campus but not why. Instead of finding out, she treated these teachers with disrespect and with so much disdain that complaints were brought against her by other employees. For some reason, this individual still has her job as a principal at the same campus.
2)
Standard 1.8: In this case, many in the school district have looked back at how this particular hiring took place and wished something had been done when it happened. The actions taken since then dealing with nepotism included a grandfather clause to where this hire was not affected. Many would now like to see this principal retire and some are attempting to convince him to do just that. The problem he is generally well liked, has been in the district for 40 years, and apparently wants to retire on this own terms.

Standard 1.10: This case shows that even if you are not involved in immoral activity, knowledge of the issue and failure to act on it in a timely manner can result in you meeting the same end, or worse, than those involved in the affair. The mind boggling thing about this case is the scope of the issue; this involved high level district and campus administrators and happened with the knowledge of many in the town, yet it took a long time for anything to be done about it.

Standard 2.7: This principal should be removed from her position or at least buried somewhere in central office. That last statement is sad but seems too often be the case (to include the example mentioned in Standard 1.10- one of the campus administrators who participated in the affair web was named director of transportation) and is a well known joke to any level of employees in the school district. Retaliation is a very severe and serious issue and the school district’s inability to act on this particular case goes directly against this standard.

3)
So much of the preventative actions for the above listed issues involve being educated in what you should do as a leader and remembering that you, as the superintendent, must be the ethical and moral guide for the district. After dealing with an issue where a principal has hired his own unqualified daughter for a position, you must have the strength to ask that principal if the hire was made in the best interest of students or was done for selfish means. From there, every principal in the district, and for that matter anybody in a position to make a hire, must be educated on these types of situations and the reasons for not doing that. You also must put appropriate nepotism rules into place in your school district, which to the credit of this district, they did (and to my knowledge, have the most stringent such roles of any district in the area).

With the issues faced in standard 1.10, you as a superintendent have to show serious strength and moral fortitude to address the employees involved in the scandal. Remember, as superintendent, you are hired as a representative of the people and are accountable to that elected school board. By not addressing the issue, you are just as guilty and must be held accountable as well. While the people involved in the scandal are probably your friends and the long term implications of addressing the issue are very bad, they pale in comparison to the news coming out anyways and the superintendent not acting in a timely manner to address the issue.

The violation in standard 2.7 is deplorable and, as I mentioned above, this person must be fired. With the transfer list being made visible to campus principals, you as superintendent must discuss with them how to handle seeing that list and appropriate ways to discuss the matter with those employees. Take the time to ask them why they are transferring, and if they don’t want to discuss it with you, have the professional courtesy to move on from the conversation and allow that person to seek another job. Don’t compound the issue by treating that person with malice; that leads to a poor climate on campus and probably more of your teachers wanting to transfer

School Finance Course Reflection

I very much looked forward to this course because school finance is an area that I am very much interested in but know very little about at the district level. In that regard, I have learned a good deal about what goes on at the district level. I feel like I have a good understanding of the district audit process after talking to our assistant superintendent and I feel somewhat better about the various types of funding that exist and how those monies can be spent. However, after five weeks of this class, my honest self assessment still consists of my many “I”’s, which is very disappointing to me.

I didn’t expect that when I finished this course, I could jump right into a job at the district level and be the person who ran the school budget. I did hope that I could move more I’s to c’s and I don’t feel like that has happened. I feel a little better about the school board role in the audit process (I actually feel pretty good about the general outline of it but not all of the details into how the select an audit firm and what if any guidance they really give them, but again, the general outline is clear to me) but am still not exactly clear in their role in the school budget process after that. I think I will learn much more about this in the coming weeks as one of the district committee’s I’m on will be a part of this process, but that learning will come after this course if completed. I’m also somewhat disappointed that the information I have learned is more general than I had hoped. We got a brief outline of important events in the finance history of the state but didn’t spend much time talking about the court cases themselves. I feel like Chapter 41 and 42 schools were discussed and the legislative role in them was mentioned, but we never discussed that magical line in the sand where one type of district ends and the other begins. I know it’s a moving target and more schools are pulling on provisions in the law that allows them to keep their money, but again, this was a general overview of the process.

I know a 5 week course cannot answer all of these questions, so maybe my bar was too high, but overall, I wanted more out of this class than I got. Again, I may be getting what I ask for in the next two courses (and trust me, the work in week three was very laborious and took three people in our group several hours to complete), but I did feel like there was more I could have learned. Now the lectures were outstanding, and I very much enjoyed listening to Dr. Stephens and Dr. Arterbury share their experiences as superintendents and how finances were a huge part of their jobs. I was told this by our assistant superintendent as well and that this was especially true if you worked in a smaller school district with small central office staff. You’ll be lucky to get to talk about differentiated instruction and classroom related items because you have to spend all of your time making sure the lights are turned on and paychecks don’t bounce; this was a very sobering statement but one that seems very appropriate. These comments were all great, and at the end of this course, it was those personal antidotes that will carry the most weight moving forward.