Double Standards of Conduct Persist in the APS

In 2005, the APS Board of Education voted unanimously to remove a role modeling clause from their own standards of conduct. It had read;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

Since, there have been double standards of conduct in the APS; the “law” for board members and senior administrators and for students, a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct; higher standards of conduct than the law.

School Board President David Peercy and the Board think they eliminated the double standards by lowering student standards of conduct by removing from them, the only mention of the actual code of ethics in question; the Pillars of Character Counts!.

Peercy has led the board astray. There are still double standards of conduct in the APS.

The new student standard reads in significant part;

“students are expected to model and promote Trustworthiness”

Nowhere in the standards of conduct that apply to the school board and to their next superintendent will you find;

“School Board Members and Superintendents are expected to model and promote trustworthiness.”

Even if there were, there is no place to file a complaint. Where would a complaint be filed over David Peercy’s manifest failure to model and promote trustworthiness?

Assume a complaint could be filed; let's say, in State Disrict Court; perhaps a Writ of Mandamus.

A controversy would develop over the meaning of the word "trustworthy".

The Board’s eloquence of lawyers will argue in favor of what ever definition allows school board members and superintendents to admit “no guilt” in any settlement of a lawsuit against them.

Those opposing will argue;

the standards of conduct that the board removed when the deleted the Pillar of Trustworthiness from student standards of conduct, suffice as the definition.

Student standards on Trustworthiness had read;

• “Honesty in communications is expressing the truth as best we know it and not conveying it in a way likely to mislead or deceive.”

• “Truthfulness is presenting the facts to the best of our knowledge.”

• “In relationships involving legitimate expectations of trust, honesty may also require candor, forthrightness and frankness, imposing the obligation to “

• Sincerity is genuineness, being without trickery or duplicity. It precludes all acts, including half-truths, out-of-context statements, and even silence, that are intended to create beliefs or leave impressions that are untrue or misleading.

Peercy’s lowering of student standards of conduct in order to lower his own, was bungled; the double standards of conduct still exist.


On the bright side for Peercy and the board, their effort to keep the media from reporting on their lowering of students standards is working as well as they could possibly hope.