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

School Administrator, Sept, 2004 by Paul Riede

Kindberg's board must choose from all the options. That's both a major challenge and a healthy exercise for members who are often tied up with more immediate debates and decisions, she says.

"At least as important as having a policy is the process you go through to get to that policy," she said. "I think it's very instructive to see what other systems are doing."

But after a big turnover of the board last November and the constant press of other issues, the board put that discussion aside temporarily. But Kindberg says she is determined to keep the issue alive. "If you don't put it on the work plan, it'll never get done."

RELATED ARTICLE: New Jersey cleans up its ethics act.

Can a school board member ethically vote on a union contract if he has a relative in the bargaining unit?

The New Jersey School Ethics Commission has wrestled with that problem several times, and the answer is not as simple as one might think.

For an immediate family member such as a spouse, son or daughter, the standard is clear: Board members who vote in such situations are in ethical breach because their actions could bestow direct financial benefits on their loved ones.

But what about less immediate relatives? The answer depends on the circumstance but the ethics commission's rulings suggest that if the relative is a son-in-taw or daughter-in-law such a vote would be unethical. If it's a brother-in-law or sister-in-law, it probably wouldn't be a broach of ethics.

In a 1996 case, the board ruled that in the case of a son-in-law. "the public could reasonably perceive that the board member's own indirect financial or personal involvement in the agreement will impair his objectivity or independence of judgment." In 1998 it ruled that a sister-in-law "does not provoke the same concern" because it doesn't involve the board member's "great interest in his child's financial well-being."

Delicate Rulings

The New Jersey commission has been making such delicate judgments for more than a decade. The rulings are based not only on the state's 1992 School Ethics Law--which covers school administrators as well as board members--but on a school board code of conduct folded into the law three years ago.

The nine-member commission remains busy, Halfway through this year. the commission had received 41 ethics complaints, according to the commission's executive director, Lisa James-Beavers. That's compared to 48 complaints to all of 2003 and 51 in 2002.

Twenty-three additional requests were made for advisory opinions during the first half of this year, compared to 32 in 2003 and 24 in 2002.

Most of the ethics complaints, perhaps as many 80 percent, are dismissed without sanction by the commission, which meets monthly, according to Mike Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, which created the code of conduct incorporated into the ethics law.

When the ethics commission rules on a complaint, the ruling is final, but the recommended sanction must be approved by the state education commissioner. The board can recommend a range of sanctions, including a private letter of censure, a public reprimand to be read aloud at a meeting of the school board in question, suspension and even removal from office. The commissioner generally backs up the recommendations.