“My hypocrisy knows no bounds.” The line from the movie Tombstone fit the character of Doc Holliday, who, as portrayed in the movie, walked on both sides of the line of law and order. Sometimes a memorable line from a movie gives us something to consider. In this case, Doc’s perception of his own hypocrisies tells us how to understand the possibility our own. Our line should be “…my hypocrisy knows its bounds”.
Take Away
Health conditions, swirling arguments, and deeply held wants in the Time of COVID make it difficult to form some decisions. Is it safe for children and teachers to be in school classrooms? Is it safe for children to engage in school athletics and activities? Recommendations by the CDC and DHS are changing – some changes being medical and others political. Professional organizations, like pediatricians, mental health workers, teacher unions, and state athletic associations weigh in with position statements. Parental voices are both silent and loud. The intention of all is to influence school-based decisions. What to do?
What do we know?
Conditions and Information will continue to change. An argument made today may fail if infection and death rates surge and the same argument may swell if those data diminish. New treatments provide promise, but the true goal is an efficacious vaccine and widespread vaccination.
What works in one community may not work in another. In a neighboring state high school football and soccer seasons are under way while in this state there is admonishment to delay fall contact sports to spring.
Different people hold to different levels of risk. Death due to COVID as a very low percentage of those infected suggests that all community activity can be justified. Death is permanent – you can re-schedule school and games but you cannot reschedule a lost life. Take your pick of statement – you may be correct in the end. Or, you may be corrected.
What to do? Hello, Doc Holliday. Don’t be a hypocrite. Find your high ground and keep to the strictures of that position. Be consistent to your beliefs. But, also understand that oppositional beliefs are present and in our representative form of government your beliefs may not become the local policies.
Why is this thus?
Decisions about school are public decisions and the public expects to participate in school decision-making. Participation is built into school board practices and procedures by state statute and local policy. School board work is our nation’s most grass root level of local government. Mail, e-mail, texts, phone calls, personal conversations, and turnouts at school board meetings, in-person and remote, are expected by elected board members. In isolated circumstances, even targeted calling out and protest directed at the person befall a board member. Participatory decision-making sometimes is uncomfortable ground, especially in critical times.
Some confuse participatory decision-making with majority rule. They are not the same. While the public deserves to and must be heard, their opinions need not form the final decision. Additionally, decision makers need to keep a perspective between loud voices and the greater community. Often, repetitively vocal citizens appear to speak for a greater number than they are. Two dozen constant voices do not speak for a community of 10,000.
To do
The the greatest extent possible, a School Board will know the bounds of its hypocrisies by doing the following.
- Listen to everyone constantly and consistently. Every speaker, writer, and e-mailer deserve the courtesy of the Board’s attention.
- Do not allow personalities to color arguments. Consider the argument regardless of the speaker’s personality. It is too easy to find irritability in what you know about the speaker, but don’t. Listen to the merits of each argument without prejudice.
- Some are more or less articulate than others. Do not mentally correct their grammar, listen to their ideas. A speaker does not have to speak in complete and coherent sentences to make a speech.
- Do not personalize. Although all outcomes are personal, make the decision-making process impersonal. Self-interest is at the heart of most communication to the School Board. If you know this to be true, do not be surprised or put off when you hear it. Treat it for what it is.
- To greatest degree possible, base decisions on facts. One man’s facts may be another man’s fiction, but there are building blocks in reliable and valid data. When you find it, use it.
- Set parameters and be flexible within those parameters. Good decisions for large group behavior are not pinpoints but set parameters that allow for a variety of acceptable behaviors within stated boundaries. Boards need to set their boundaries and give school administration and staff the opportunity to develop options within those boundaries.
- If the basis for your final decision is proven wrong, be prepared to make a more current and corrected decision. Change is a constant. You may be faulted for a decision that does not work out; you will be damned for sticking to a decision after you know it does not work.
- Don’t be a hypocrite. Do the proper work. Find your high ground. Declare the decision and enact the decision. And, monitor how your decision works.
The big duh
We watch our favorite sports team and understand and accept that how the team’s game plan changes. A football team, for example, plans for its competition weeks in advance. Hence, we expect a game plan and team practicing of that game plan. However, when the game is underway, we watch our quarterback call an audible play. He sees conditions across the line of scrimmage that the game plan did not anticipate. He calls an audible and changes the play on the spot.
COVID is a humongous audible play. All the players are adjusting rapidly to life in a pandemic that was not in the game plan. School boards are quarterbacks considering the facts across the line of scrimmage in the state and community and they are calling audibles as the facts and conditions and guidance evolve.
Listen. Rely on facts. Provide clear details in each audible. Be consistent in enacting decisions. Allow for flexibility within the parameters of your decision. Do not accept hypocrisy.