How to Handle Staff Misconduct.

How to Handle Staff Misconduct: A Practical Guide for School Principals and Supervisors offers a step-by-step process that guides administrators through the investigation, documentation and conferencing phases of working with staff members on a variety of issues.

Especially valuable is the advice on establishing standards of acceptable conduct for staff members, including the outlines of a progressive disciplinary process to correct unwanted behaviors. However, the book seems fairly repetitive. Many of the chapters on staff misconduct end with the same recommended steps. Missing is a chapter offering specific examples of data collection in school districts. Many administrators collect data, but few know when their data is sufficient for the judicial process.

Still, this work by Edward Lawrence and Myra Vachon is a good resource for principals. Their appendix of resources can be formatted to the particular misconduct of a staff member along with the legal requirements to be followed in the event of a court hearing.

(How to Handle Staff Misconduct: A Practical Guide for School Principals and Supervisors, 2nd edition, by C. Edward Lawrence and Myra K. Vachon, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2003, 123 pp., $29.95 softcover)

Paul A. Shaw

Superintendent, White County School District, Cleveland, Ga.