It’s Time for Qualifications, Ethics and If Need Be, Interventions for Local School Boards 

For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: September 19, 2008

We are pleased that Governor Perdue finally chose to remove members from the Clayton County School Board. Unfortunately the action did not come in time to prevent the very sanctions we spoke about earlier this year.

Sadly, the most serious sanction – loss of accreditation – has fallen on the students and teachers in Clayton County who have been doing their very best each day under the most difficult circumstances. The key question now is how to prevent this from ever happening again.

Clearly, an earlier intervention might have saved the district’s accreditation status and prevented this tragedy from unfolding. Last week the State Board of Education received the recommendations of a committee formed to study local boards and ways to address the serious problems that have come to public attention.

It seems to us that there are three main components of a solution: enhanced requirements for board candidates, a substantive and rigorously enforced code of ethics, and procedures for timely intervention when boards go haywire.

PAGE has always endorsed a vigorous Code of Ethics for professional educators – a code that is vigorously enforced by the Professional Standards Commission (PSC). We see no reason why such a code and enforcement procedure cannot be created for local boards of education and enforced by the PSC.

We also support qualifications for candidates providing assurance to the public that qualified, ethical individuals have come forward to provide local leadership. Currently the law allows educators to serve on boards in systems other than those in which they work. Last week’s recommendations included one that no currently employed educator can serve on any board. While this idea should be seriously considered, we can see merits on either side of the issue. Some educators may rightly object to being denied a civic responsibility, one for which they feel uniquely qualified. Others may cite the fact that the history of local boards of education in our nation is one of lay governance and not governance by the educators themselves.

(Indeed, the board members removed by the governor were active educators)

Many educators may not desire to step into the increasingly challenging arena of local boards, choosing to focus their energies on their profession and not exposing themselves to the controversies and late night constituent telephone calls that come with that territory. The proposal needs full and fair discussion in which all points of view are heard.

We encourage the state board and the state legislature to conduct a rigorous public debate that will move us toward implementation of a series of recommendations centered on qualifications, ethics and intervention that will help prevent a future occurrence of such a tragedy elsewhere in the state. Changes in the law and even constitutional changes may be required, but we cannot let another system lose its accreditation.

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PAGE, the state's largest organization for professional educators, is a nonunion association of more than 72,000 teachers, administrators and support personnel members providing professional learning to enhance competence and confidence, build leadership and increase student achievement.