Ethics and community values.

When addressing ethics in school governance, I consider the engineer who was hired to drain the swamp but did not realize the magnitude of the job until being surrounded by mad alligators. While our purpose as school leaders is to provide the best education possible for children, sometimes it is difficult to adhere to our objectives when confronted with regulations of the modern day.

For example, in a rural setting in northwestern Illinois, it isn't unusual for students to go deer hunting each November. My school district, in an effort to improve attendance, invoked a policy 21 years ago making the opening of hunting season an unexcused absence. While some parents plan their family vacations around hunting, they did agree to abide by the policy. As a result, students would hunt in early morning, come to school for classes and return to the hunt after school.

Following the tragedy at Columbine High School, legislators passed laws to expel students possessing firearms at school. I'm sure you know where this story is leading.

During the next year's deer season, several high school students returning from early morning hunting left their shotguns hanging on racks in the back window of their pickups parked outside school. Other parents spotted the weapons and reported them. The police alerted the school to the presence of guns.

Legally, I should have had the students arrested and expelled for the firearms violation. However, knowing the community's values, I could not. I called the parents of the student hunters and asked them to remove the weapons from school property. Word spread like wildfire that students had brought guns into school. However, by facing the issue publicly and honestly, I calmed everyone down. Common sense prevailed.

In another instance in Scottsdale, Ariz., common sense did not prevail. An elementary school child, wearing an American flag pin to school, was sent home by an administrator who was following rules that ban the display of medallions on clothing worn to school. In this urban district, such fixtures were considered potential gang symbols.

The date of the incident was Sept. 11, 2003, so once the patriotic motive became clear, the student was allowed to return wearing the pin. An apology was appropriately extended to the pupil.

While we cannot tolerate lapses of safety and security in our schools, we still must apply common sense and restraint when addressing ethical issues involving students by considering the extraordinary situations that sometimes arise.

At times we as leaders need to consider our ethical perspective and community values in the largest context, what it means to live in today's world and be a part of humanity. For that reason, I have borrowed this summary of statistics from the Leadership and Renewal Forum for superintendents sponsored by Motorola. When one considers our world from such an incredibly compressed perspective, the need for tolerance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent.

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this ...

* There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere and eight Africans.

* Of the 100 people, 70 would be non-white; 30 would be white.

* Of the population, 70 would be non-Christian; 30 would be Christian.

* Fifty percent of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of six people. All six would be U.S. citizens.

* Of the 100 people, 70 would be unable to read.

* Fifty people would suffer from malnutrition.

* Only one person of the entire population would have a college education.