Identify 3 ethical dilemmas in your workplace, a minimum of two which are “right versus right” in nature. Prepare a written description/case of each. Select one of the “right versus right” dilemmas and prepare an action plan for addressing it. Refer to Brousseau and Kidder articles. Ethical Dilemma #1 Personal Necessity Leaves and Employees Most district policy manuals have this phrase at the beginning of the section on personal leaves- “Whenever possible, employees shall request personal leaves in advance and prepare suitable lesson plans or instructions for a substitute employee.” This sounds good in theory, but as most administrators know, it isn’t always the norm. Most times employees are running up to you breathlessly with some emergency that in many cases could have been planned or at least done outside of the workday. Personal leaves are generally counted as part of the employee’s specified days that they can be absent without penalty. Personal leaves are intended for family sickness rather than the illness of the employee. This policy also takes into account that the unexpected will occur on occasion, but that in most cases the employee should make other plans for leaving the workplace. All of these intentions bring about situations that create decisions that create a need for great discernment from the administrator. Some employees have poor work ethics and look to get away at any chance that becomes available. Others consider their family schedule to be more important than the work schedule agreed to in their contract and place appointments to the doctor or dentist within the workday and ask for an hour or two to get away. Even sometimes employees will schedule vacations during their contracted days and expect the administrator to honor their reservations. All of these scenarios are wrong on the part of the employee to create and even worse for them to ask the administrator to make a decision. Usually the manager’s decision is easy; just say no. It is easier said than done, however, to think about saying no to an employee’s odd request than it is to verbally say no. Teachers are especially a vulnerable lot with fragile egos and temperaments. Like fine race horses their day can be upset by the smallest of happenstance. Denying them something as small as “getting away for a few minutes” can be construed by them as insensitive and uncaring, thus putting a poor light on their feelings for the administration and any future dealings. Productivity can be affected, morale can suffer, and ultimately students will suffer academically. I faced this predicament several years ago and came up with conditions for personal leave and consequences for habitual behavior. The bargaining unit and I hashed out the wording and agreed to it during the annual negotiation settlement. Employees may take up to three personal days which do not require an explanation. After the three days, the employee must furnish a legitimate excuse or they will be docked the amount of substitute teacher pay the district incurred during the teacher’s absence. We have had the policy in place, but have had to work with employees to educate them as to what constitutes a personal leave and what doesn’t. Even though we have clarified the policy and taken much of the subjectivity out of the hands of the administrator, there is still much room for opinion and personal judgment. This is where the ethical dilemma surfaces. Studying the thinking of Kidder has been both introspective and fruitful. I have used his very practical platform of reasoning out a solution through ethics-based questions of the problem itself for many small decisions that have come to me the past two weeks. I will now attempt to do the same to the issue of personal leaves. Being firm and consistent in decision-making is all that anyone can wish for from a leader. Creating decisions that are for the greater good of the organization is what causes this issue of personal leaves to be so important. Kidder says that you will “know what is right only by determining what will eventually happen” and this is easy to see with this issue. The employee has signed a contract for employment that is indelibly linked to a calendar of student days. Nothing is more important in a school than the safety and education of the children attending. Leaving the students with a substitute even for a legitimate reason is proven to be harmful to the students academically. Leaving them unexpectedly in the middle of the day can be disruptive to their psyche and contribute to misbehavior, time off task, and generally take a class day away from an already too short academic year. The greater good that must be served in this case are the students. The creation of “zero tolerance” in districts has always bothered me, but it is a good example of rule-based thinking. Create a rule that cannot be violated without consequence. This is great for administrators because it makes for a very black and white decision path to follow with no room for opinion and thus error. You signed a contract, here is the agreement, your current problem is not my problem, now go away and get back to your job. Allowing one employee to take a vacation and not another because of longevity or circumstance is just asking for trouble from the group. As soon as a manager allows the workplace structure of time on task to be less important than the employee’s personal time schedule, the game is afoot. All of the employees will have excuses of some sort that will appear to be “critical” and the manager will be accused of “you did it for her” if the answer is no. It is easy to predict because of human nature and situations others have experienced and documented. However, employing the rule-based thinking for personal leaves is saying there will never be a time when “stuff happens” and when you work with kids, stuff always happens. As educators we are probably more sensitive to this than most employers because we work around unpredictable situations all day. We are also more sensitive to family situations and truly realize the importance of making decisions that help keep families together rather than split them apart because of policy or rules. All of us have seen children suffer from childhood and into adult life because of split families, divorces, and other than parent daily care. None of us want this for the families of our employees so we tend to be more lenient and understanding. In all my dealings with people and students, I have always felt a strong affinity to the “Golden Rule.” I have always had the gift of being credible to a child, having the ability to really listen to them, and better yet, understand where they are coming from in their school or personal life. So, employing the Golden Rule or care-based thinking to my decisions has been easier for me than most others. Rules are meant to establish a foundation, but caring for individuals as you would like to be cared for is the building of the home in which we live. It eliminates double standards and creates an environment where we can all live together harmoniously. That is true if we are all honest. Unfortunately, not all employees are honest. Sometimes the stories managers are given sound heartfelt and with application of care-based thinking the decision is made in favor of the employee. When word of this reaches other employees, it can encourage others to lie in order for them to achieve their greater goal. The workplace is disrupted but the manager is unaware because no one wants to tattle-tale on a peer. Ultimately, I must make decisions based on each and every case’s merits and the standing and circumstances of the employee. The policy that has been put into place is solid, yet can always be changed to reflect circumstance as it occurs. I prefer to think of individuals as honest and trustworthy and will only place new rules into policy after that philosophy has been proven wrong. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Ethical Dilemma #2 Interdistrict Transfer Students Interdistrict transfers are difficult to adjudicate. Years ago over half of the 500 students were interdistrict. The previous superintendent needed to bring student population up in order to survive the last state debacle in 1993. He actually went out and recruited students, most of whom were from his own Mormon network of families. When I arrived a new subdivision of over 1000 homes was almost built and families were being sold homes based on the premise that the school was a little school and families would have a unique educational experience. However, as soon as they enrolled, the school became larger and less unique. No plans had been made for growth and the site only accommodated about 550 students. I was hired to solve all the problems including contaminated water, disintegrating septic fields, lack of acreage for building, and lack of funding for those buildings. Oh, and of course, continue a quality education with the new class size reduction, state standards, and off the shelf state assessments. My second School Board meeting featured a parent yelling at the members because there were not enough classrooms for her daughter to attend. This was August and I was hurriedly throwing together relos for September. She suggested getting rid of all the interdistrict transfer students because “they don’t belong here anyway.” At that time every volunteer we had was a parent of an interdistrict transfer including the PTA officers. They became enraged and wanted to know how I was going to shut this woman up and what I was going to do about her allegations. On a third front I learned that the “real” valley residents resented not only the interdistrict transfers, but also the new “development” residents and they desired to have the “little school in the valley” remain small like it had been since 1952. I had a talk with an attorney as well as discussed this with other superintendents. I learned that once an interdistrict transfer student was accepted at the district, the district became their new school of residence and there is very little you can do to take this right away from them. Only continued severe disobedience, absences/tardies, or perjury on the original application could be grounds for discontinuing their attendance. The only course I could see for this dilemma was to attack the issue of parents who lied on the application and discontinue the practice of accepting interdistrict transfers. The school at that time was quite popular and many people attempted to enroll their children. Ends-based thinking gave me an easy answer in that with double the school enrollment occurring in the next four years, the greater good would be served by not encouraging any interdistrict students except those of parents employed forty hours or more inside the district boundaries. “Rule utilitarianism” came into play since I was clearly within my legal rights to establish rules of order to enrollment. I created the rules and made sure they were to the greatest good. Rule based thinking gave me the same answers since the highest principle would be to honor those families who actually reside and pay taxes in our district. These parents purchased homes in our district in some cases just so they could attend our school. Students desiring the interdistrict transfer had the opportunity to attend other fine schools closer to their home, so my principles are easily assuaged knowing these students are still receiving a good education. My heart goes out to the new and old families. They are the reason I am in business, the reason the district was formed in the first place. I know that if I were a resident of this valley that I would expect a seat to be created for my child. I pay taxes, I own a home, and I have all the legal rights. Care-based thinking puts them at the top of the list. After all I am not throwing the current interdistrict transfer students out; I am merely not allowing new ones in to the school Ethical Dilemma #3 Principal at the Bargaining Table This district has rarely bargained with the teacher’s union for longer than one year at a time. The district is a one school district of 1560 K-12 students and very poor in revenue although the community is upper middle income. I have never enjoyed the yearly drudgery of negotiations. Because I am superintendent I sit as chief negotiator and because we are poor, I have never hired an attorney to sit with me. My discomfort comes from also being the principal. I sit across the table from my site teachers, my colleagues, my friends. We walk in talking about the usual and are suddenly thrown into a discussion of money, benefits, policy, and personal beliefs about working conditions. It has never become nasty, but it always feels so adversarial. I always suspect my integrity is being questioned because of the issue of Truth vs. Loyalty in the right vs. right dilemma. Am I being the honest principal they have come to know and love or am I being the loyal superintendent who must keep his promise to do what is right for the organization and keep the district fiscally responsible? Even I question myself at times and wonder which hat I am wearing. In closed sessions with the School Board I have used this metaphor and talked out of both sides of my mouth first as superintendent and then as principal. They laugh yet understand the dilemma and better understand where I am coming from in my recommendations. Years ago, I tried to get the bargaining unit to begin placing potential benefit increases into the salary schedule. The prevailing thought, as it is in many districts, is that fully paid family healthcare is a God-given right and shall remain as such always. It was never considered by the group that members with families received far more in benefits than single members. I urged them to consider the single members and accept my recommendation that all employees receive a reimbursement for medical expenses instead of an increase in full family benefits. They accepted the proposal. But I had a dual purpose in making this recommendation. The first was creating equality among members in the amount of benefits each individual received. The second (that I never disclosed to them) was to rid the district of the philosophy that the employer should pay for full family benefits. By creating a reimbursement fund the member with a family was not directly receiving the full amount and therefore the philosophy died and has not returned. It is a sounder financial plan for the district and a more equitable accord for current and future employees. But by not disclosing my greater goal during those discussions, did I break my trust with the team? The resolution process I employed in the negotiations was ends-based. I knew the negotiation team was immature and single-minded and would be hard-pressed to bring the proposal back to the membership with an open mind. I knew that breaking the tradition of full pay for benefits was best for all in the future, but needed to be broken in little bits at a time. I could maximize the results of the proposal by not announcing future benefits of the plan to a team I felt would not be able to see the end result. It fits perfectly with Brousseau’s description of how effectiveness “distributes resources to various groups in direct proportion to their size and ability to affect decisions.” Writing about it now makes me feel like the patriarch making decisions for his little ones who don’t quite understand. Using rule-based thinking I know for a fact that all bargaining teams hold back some information from the other side in order to further their cause. Simply by meeting in closed session with the Board, I am admitting we discuss things in private that we don’t want the bargaining team to hear. Therefore, the rules would imply that holding back information from them is the usual procedure and not a breakdown in trust or honesty. Care-based thinking is another matter, however. Applying the Golden Rule to this situation makes me cringe. Of course, I would want to know everything the other side knows and thinks before I made a decision! But to whom should I give this information? Is it the interest-based individual across the table or the entire cadre of members? Allowing one or two people to carry an important message of future planning is inherently flawed. Is the idea of the Golden Rule acceptable for one-on-one dealings but flawed for group conversation? I don’t know, but I do know how to negotiate and for eight years we have been an academically successful and financially stable district. Perhaps the ends have justified the means….
