Standard 1.2: The educator shall not knowingly misappropriate, divert, or use monies, personnel, property, or equipment committed to his or her charge for personal gain or advantage. There was an assistant principal in my former district that stole fundraising money out of the school vault. She used the money to pay her personal bills.
Short term consequence: The assistant principal was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
Long term consequence: The assistant principal had to reimburse the money she stole from the district and was dismissed from her position after the investigation was concluded. There were also legal charges made against her.
Preventive Strategy: The Superintendent was able to apply laws, policies, and procedures in a fair and reasonable manner because the district had procedures in place. However, the Superintendent and district administration reexamined how finances and fundraising money was handled in the district. The money in the safe was to be deposited within 24 hours. If any money was to be placed into the safe then two people in the front office had to sign-off on the amount of money being place in the safe and it had to be verified by the principal. A new safe was purchased for every school in the district with a key and combination entry. Then the combination was to be changed every time an administrator left the district.
Standard 1.3: The educator shall not submit fraudulent requests for reimbursement, expenses or pay. I currently work in a district office. We travel throughout the district and are reimbursed for our mileage. It is on the honor system. However, we had one employee turn in a mileage form one month that had more mileage listed on the log than what the employee actually drove.
Short term consequence: The employee received a written reprimand and had to reimburse the district the money she had requested for reimbursement.
Long term consequence: The employee must now seek approval before traveling to a campus and must turn in her calendar monthly to her supervisor.
Standard 1.6: The educator shall not falsify records, or direct or coerce others to do so. In a district that I worked in a teacher falsified a student’s progress on a student’s IEP goals and objectives. It appeared to the parent the student was making progress on items she was not progressing at all. This was discovered when the student transferred to another school in the district. The new school could not understand how the last teacher had arrived at her numbers of mastery criteria and called in district administration. When the teacher was asked for her data and how she arrived at her numbers the teacher could not produce any data and said she had made it up.
Short- term consequence: The short-term consequence to this action was the teacher was put on administrative leave. Also, the district had to provide extended school year services and compensatory services to the student.
Long term consequences: The teacher was allowed to keep her job. However, a written reprimand is in her permanent human resource file. The teacher will have a difficult time being transferred between schools or being employed by another district.
Preventive Strategy: The teacher is required to turn her data and IEP Progress reports into the principal every nine weeks. Also, the ARD facilitators and are required to look at IEP Progress report notes before the documents go home to parents. Also, district administration has provided more training on data collection. This issue is example of how the Superintendent and other district leaders can monitor and address ethical issues impacting education.
Standard 2.2. The educator shall not harm others by knowingly making false statements about a colleague or the school system. Sadly, this happens much more often than it should in public education. I could tell countless stories of teachers making up stories about other colleagues. I have been on the end of having someone make false statements about me and ended up costing me a principal position. I had a fellow colleague make up a story about something I supposedly posted on Facebook and reported it to the Superintendent. However, the Superintendent did not know how to interact with district staff, students, school board, and community in a professional and ethical manner when handling this situation and it was not handled in an appropriate way. The rumor spread and it cost me the principal job I was up for at the time.
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