LETTERS.

Re: Ethics, Few Choices

BY VANCE RAMAGE

Superintendent, Paducah Public Schools, Paducah, Kentucky

I am both encouraged and discouraged by the discussion of ethics in The School Administrator as a basis for school leaders' decisions.

I am encouraged because Edward Rozycki, in his January letter to the editor ("A Disturbing Picture"), recognizes that administrators and especially superintendents work in a milieu of high-level stress, politics, and the world of possibilities for students.

My discouragement comes from the views of letter-writer Ralph Kimbrough ("Sad State for Ethics," January 1997) and author William Fenstermaker ("The Ethical Dimension of Superintendent Decision Making," October 1996), who cling to some mystic realm of ethics as determined on the university campus.

In the rough-and-tumble world of educational leadership today, the superintendent is required to make do with limited resources to create patchwork programs to serve students adequately. I do not wish to be too dramatic or whiny on this point, but it is rough out here and there is little support for new resources or resource reallocations needed to respond to students' academic needs.

Superintendents in most cases today are acutely aware of the ethical dimensions of the leadership dilemmas we face. However, at the end of the day, superintendents generally will decide to accept the best program or decision we can get for the welfare of students, staff, and employees. We have few choices in today's public school environment, ethics notwithstanding!

My superintendent colleagues are ethically competent and morally upright professionals who constantly are forced to choose the best of what's available to offer to their students. Can our decision-making procedures and considerations be improved? Yes, of course. We can do better in making choices, and we will try.

A Different Simonds

BY SUSAN MILLER

Editor, Freedom to Learn Newsletter, Allentown, Pennsylvania

I read with interest the article in November by Robert Simonds (Common Ground: A Pipe Dream or a Dream Come True?").

Having followed him for several years, I thought his message about promoting a peace process just did not ring true. So I reread the last few newsletters of his organization, Citizens for Excellence in Education. His message to his readers is radically different from what he told your readers about dropping all retaliatory rhetoric in order to encourage conciliation with the public schools.

Consider this comment from his October newsletter: "The ACLU, PAW (People For the American Way), and NEA are financed by dedicated atheists who want every Christian child to have their faith in God destroyed and every vestige of religious or moral principle eliminated from American life! My life is committed to seeing this does not happen."

If you really want to know what's going on in his head, I suggest you subscribe to his newsletter. It's very different from what you published. And I would be careful about participating in the selling of Robert Simonds. He wants to see the destruction of America's public education system as we know it.

Don't Forget Peers

BY REX R. ROTH 

Superintendent, Triton School Corporation, Bourbon, Indiana

The Focus article offering budgeting suggestions by Sandra Graczyk and Clark Godshall ("Budget Advice for Newcomers to Superintendency," November 1996) was an appropriate overview for the rookies in our profession. Their practical recommendations are good, common-sense applications.

I would add one more ingredient to complement their recipe: peer consultation. No one in our profession has all the answers. New superintendents (and experienced ones, too!) should develop a practice of communicating regularly with peers. Developing a good sounding-board network will assist immensely in superintendent survival.