Board ethics: in states and communities, the ongoing struggle to codify appropriate behavior of school board members

School Administrator, Sept, 2004 by Paul Riede

One dissenter called it "a loyalty code." Another called it "an empty gesture" because it had failed to quell infighting among members the previous year.

Board member Lynn McGrath says the board is getting along better now, and the ethics debate is on the back burner. But she warns other school boards to consider carefully the timing and motives for introducing or revising such codes of conduct. "If it's not done for the right reasons it can be done in a harmful way. You can't bring something in if there's no trust on the board because it can be abused," she says.

A similar dispute arose last year in the Francis Howell School District near St. Louis. The board approved a code of ethics that included a provision that all members must support board decisions after they are approved by the board.

That didn't sit well with Mark Lafata, a maverick board member who frequently opposes the board majority. He says he voted for and signed the code under pressure and was not allowed to remove his signature without another board vote, which he would have lost.

"They basically said either sign this or we're going to tell the public you're not being ethical," he says.

Lafata argued that he represents a constituency that needs him to speak out on issues. If he doesn't agree with the outcome of a board vote, he should have the right to continue to speak out, he contends. "They were trying to seek a way to stop any negative publicity. I think it's a control issue. There are certain people in this community who want to be represented.... It's almost like a violation of my freedom of speech rights."

Proponents of such provisions argue that board members can debate as much as they want before a vote, but once the vote is taken and a policy is adopted they should form a united front behind it.

Considering Options

The DeKalb County, Ga., school board ran across a different problem with its code of ethics last year. The code required the board to reject any contract bids for district work from firms whose employees contributed to the political campaigns of school board members. The code would have meant the board could not extend its contract with the partnership that was managing ongoing construction and renovation projects. Four of the board's members had received contributions from people or companies that did work with the district, the Atlanta Constitution-Journal reported.

The board waived that portion of its ethics policy and vowed to review and rewrite the policy as needed.

In North Carolina, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board started discussing its current ethics policy last year after a board member talked to the press about discussions the board had in private session. Although the district has an ethics policy, it does not cover proper conduct for members of the board, says Kindberg, who chairs the board's policy committee.

Kindberg says the board has been collecting ethics policies from other school boards, both inside and outside North Carolina. They range from highly prescriptive to very general and from first-person pledges to third-person descriptions of proper behavior. Some have teeth in the form of sanctions for board members who violate them while others are strictly advisory.